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.
A priipolls as eight and ten Americans prefer the US be made up of people all over the world. That's eighty percent of all Americans. We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's owner, Rick Wilson joins us to talk about the Big Beautiful Bills, raw deal for the American people. Then we'll talk to New York City Councilmen Justin Brannan about his run for New York City Comptroller and how the job can change citizens' lives. But first the.
News Molly, so raden up seems like he's not so hot on the budget and a lot of these cuts that are happening in the Big Beautiful Bill.
So I always think we should pause because a lot of these Republicans want you to think one thing and then end up voting with Trump. So as much as look, am I glad that Ron and On thinks that the bill poses major consequences for taxes and more and warns there enough to you, peace Centator is to block it. Yes, do I wonder if they're just trying to push a few things they want and then they'll support it. Probably. No, I don't think you should give these Republicans the benefit
of the doubt. Also, remember, I just think it's so interesting how Jake Tapper is now getting the Republicans he wants on the show. It's just such a coincidence. And dut Johnson, what are the odds that you'd write a book and then all of a sudden you'd get more Republicans on your show. Interesting, Look, there are other Republicans who are blocking this legislation, and for now we'll see what happens. Like this bill, they think they're going to
get a pass by July fourth, Maybe they will. Maybe the Senate is filled with the same level of cowardice as the House is. Certainly you would not go broke voting, you would not go broke betting on Republican cowardice. But you got people like Grand Paul who really want to cut social programs and hurt people in order to save money, which again that is a Republican trope. And you have
people the party, you have a lot. It's a big tent of it's actually not a big tent, but there are real, very conservative conservatives who care only about the deficits, and we'll see what happens. But I don't have a ton of faith in any of these Republicans.
So, as always, one of Republicans' favorite things to do is pretend they didn't see the suite, pretend they didn't hear about the thing, when we all know that they've heard about it. But they know how to play the media because they'll be let off the hook and they're not going to follow up a week later because there'll be a storm more there. We have storm more of corrupt things Trump has done. But Mike Johnson is pretending he's too busy to care about Trump's crypto grift dinner.
Yeah. Look, Mike Johnson serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump. He was installed to be Donald Trump's lackey. He serves as Donald Trump's lackey. He makes Paul Ryan look like Lincoln. I'm right, So again, he didn't see it. He doesn't. It's good because it's out in the open. I mean, there's like think about saying that about any other crime. It's good that it's out in the open. It's good she shoplifts so we all can see it's an insane It is an insane thing to say.
Yeah, speaking of insane, the Republicans snuck a provision into their megabill that would let Trump defy the courts.
Yes, look, this bill is filled with pork. And this is another one. They've snuck all sorts of shit in here. Here's one that says it is a This is from Dahlia. Let's everyone's favorite. And they talk about this friend of the pods, I think Dhalia. They talk about this bill that would really has all sorts of stuff in there about not preventing judges from being able to be I mean, look, the whole goal of Trumpism right now is to defy the judiciary because the judiciary isn't doing what they want,
so they've targeted them. And again, this is a provision this Republican bill. Here's an article from the New York Times. Republican bill would limit judges contempt power. So a sprawling domestic policy bill Republicans are pushing through on Tuesday would limit the power of federal judges to hold people in contempt. This would shield Trump and members of the administration from
the consequence of violating court orders. If you ever needed to they're showing you what they're going to do, just like Mike Johnson says out in the open.
YEP, So the Supreme Court is going to help Doze avoid turning over records in this lawsuit from Crew and I think as usual we're seeing everybody's like, oh good, the court's pushing back, but we're seeing where those limits are, and those limits, as usual are corruption.
Yeah. I mean, look, there's been some pushback from the courts and that is good. But Judge Roberts, John Roberts is still very much a maga judge. Right at the end of the day. Well, you may not let Trump completely disembowel the federal government. It's pretty close. So you know, this is where we are. So it's good that they're doing some things. They're certainly not going to do what is needed in this situation.
Yeah.
And friend of the pod David Sirota, who's been on head, did that podcast The Master Plan that showed that John Roberts actually wrote lots of papers on why things like this would be good and was very into the style of corruption correct.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome to past politics.
Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast, how are you this fine day?
I am cycling through a pretty severe gaze of laryngitis, but I'm still moving.
But you know, you're a damn professional, so you're going to do the work and make it happen.
Not It's at least I'm not at Seacott yet.
You know, I do think the idea of the cut would probably not be salutary for your health, and your voice would probably not work out as well as as some might think.
So let's talk about what this weekend has brought. The big beautiful bell of buxom billionaires bankrupting benevolent, seemingly benevolent federal institutions goes on.
Look at the big beautiful bill. It's gonna turn out, I think, in a weird way, the fiscal impacts are going to be catastrophic for the country. We're having all this new debt, the deficit. The bond market's already going whoa, whoaoa eas up, what's this about? But the stuff we're finding inside the big beautiful bill that's even crazier, like no regulation on AI for ten years and all these special carve outs for different companies and different people and
bitcoin and all this other stuff. It's just underneath the surface in this thing. I think it's going to turn out to be an even uglier and more catastrophic and shittier outcome even than the skeptics. And I certainly count myself among them, even among what the skeptics of this bill thought would happen. It's looking much worse than it
did in the in the early going. And I think we're going to end up, you know, with the Senate, because Thune is saying to people basically, you know, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna juice this thing through there, and it's going to happen. And and look all the all the brave people in the Senate, you know, and we know how that's going to end there. Every Republican is going to vote for the damn thing, and a half a dozen Democrats are going to vote for the damn thing. And I think it's.
Just really I don't think I have a dozen Democrats are going to vote for it, fetterman. I mean, I think I think that it's going to get changed. I mean, whether or not it gets worse or best.
See Okay, I will, I will take that. I don't think they're necessarily going to vote for the bill in its House form, but they're going to have. The Senate's going to have input on this. But I don't think it's going to be something that really revises the worst aspects of it. I think it's going to end up still being a giveaway, you know, a tax cut for Elon Musk and a and even And I've beaten my head against the wall on this until I'm until I'm migrained.
All of you Republicans who think you're getting a tax cut out of this bill, who do not happen to make over about two million dollars a year, all of you think you're getting a tax cut. Some of you will be getting a tiny little taste that expires in two years. The costs at the top of the ticket are forever. Y'all's middle class tax cut is sunset, it.
Enjoy So I'm not sure what's going to happen next. But I wonder how much pushback would work on this, like people going out there, because what we've seen in this administration is there's a real reason Elon Musk is no longer running the federal government, and you couldn't say he got what he wanted. But I think he wanted to stay forever and ever I say so too. Yeah, so now he is gone, and there was a reason because he pulled more poorly than the bubonic. So the question.
Is, Molly, that's one hundred percent right. Elon wanted to keep playing with the levers of government. It's the perfect nerd toy, right. He wanted to keep like tweaking things and playing with doge and getting people's data, all this stuff. He reached the end of his runway. They were getting intolerant of him. You're right, he was as popular as
the plague. People in Washington who who were willing to wait him out finally lost patience and they and you know, accommodation of Susie Wiles and Scott Beston and a bunch of other folks at the cabinet level, you know, none of whom singularly were as powerful as Elon Musk, but collectively they managed to change the public environment. And when they started leaking those stories that said Elon's on the way out, Elon is doomed. Must did not understand what
was happening to him in the DC world. Now, look, he's going to try to come back in. He's going to try to stay in the orbit. He's going to try to you know, stay his best buddy to the president, all those things that he kind of really enjoyed in this process so that he can continue with his fuckery. And I think he will have some marginal success with that. But look, he did get one set of things he wanted. He got rid of regulators who look at Tesla, right,
he got rid of regulations about self driving cars. He got rid of regulations about the rocket, you know, right.
But again, like all of this, none of this is a facto company. All of this could change. All of this, can you know? The more that people push back, I mean, it really does work, and that's what we see. And an example I think is the tariffs, right, I mean the tariffs. Obviously Trump is completely crazy about tariffs, but ultimately I think the market thinks and maybe they're wrong, maybe they're right that they can that they can eventually
wear him down to not do that. That they are threats but not actual levers.
I didn't make this up, but I love it. The phrase that was floating around on Friday after Trump made more crazy tariffs, talk about Apple paying more in Europe paying more? Is taco? Trump always chickens out yeah on the tearffs, And that has been the pattern so far, which is why the markets have kept playing the roller coaster game where he says something crazy, the market reacts badly, he shuts up for two days, market comes back, He waits a little bit, says something crazy. This roller coaster.
But if the taco rule actually works, and if the taco rule holds up, then the markets are anticipating we will be out of this tariff window in some reasonably short period of time. I don't think that's true. I think it's crap. I think he's going to absolutely keep playing with the terarift stuff because he's obsessive about it, and it's like one of the only things I talked to you, and I talked about this before. It's one
of the only things he believes in. He doesn't believe it a lot, but for whatever reason in his weird, fucked up history, he believes in terrorists.
I am not going to try to predict the future, but I will say that you have accurately predicted the future with one thing very well, So I'm gonna read you aheadline from Fortune, and I think you're going to appreciate it. Okay, influencer, excuse me, I run a dog kennel for those of you who hear little booboo in the background. Influencer who attended Trump's mean Coin dinner says he got a quote Walmart steak and no access to the president discuss.
Look, I've seen the photos. It is a It is a piece of meat that if it was being rated by the FDA would have been substandard, but edible with a piece of fish and some mashed potatoes and a carrot. If you're paying a million plus bucks for that dinner, you I can recommend any number of Michelin restaurants that would do a lot better for you, with many fewer zeros involved in the bill.
Trump organic field green salad an entre duet of Philet Mignon and Pansy or to Ali. But everyone on my table was saying the food was some of the worst food they'd ever had.
It looked like dorm food. It looked like dorm food. It looked like it wasn't quite prison food, but it looked like dorm food. And and this is the classic thing about Trump. When you go to one of his clubs or his golf courses, they have like the like them from a mile away. They look like what Trump believed classy things look like. And Trump's the only person the word who would use where it's like CLESSI without run right, But when you get up close, it's garbage.
It's all. It's all, you know, it's all a very thin sheen of t mouse style ornamentation and decoration. You know, the Oval Office is in the Oval Office. Came from fucking hobby lobby, you know, just it's not So it shouldn't surprise these crypto guys that that they are now on the on the next generation of suckers, that Donald Trump has suckered and look his the scope of his corruption is increasing. It is certainly vastly wider than it was in twenty sixteen, back in twenty seventeen, in the
first term. Back then he was like, yeah, you're gonna have to stay in my hotel and pay ten thousand dollars a night.
It's gone a little more sophisticated.
Now there's some more zeros on the end, and this they are the Trump boys are absolutely using the perceived threat of Trump's anger and sanction against folks at the companies in Vietnam. If here had the Times this morning, Vietnam has fast tracked a Trump golf resort and through this environmentally since that area because they want to keep Donald Trump happy and they want to have wanted to undo the trade sanction, so they're buying a ship ton
of starlinks and letting Trump build a golf course. The corruption is kind of crude and clownish, but it is it is. This is the best business Trump has ever run, This big scam, this grift of rama is the best business Trump has ever run.
So let's talk a little bit about what what's happening now with Trump and this grift he I mean, I just want to do one more question about this dinner because at this dinner people complained that they didn't actually like So the complaints from sort of ethics watchdogs, whatever few are left, was like, they're buying access to the president. But because this is Trump and everything Trump touches die, they actually didn't even get to meet him or elon.
So he was selling axes and they didn't even get the ax Look, what.
Are they going to do? Sue him? No, complain he might regulate them then, because look, we all know Trump can turn on a dime on any issue. He used to be anti crypto and now he's pro crypto. Yeah, and so these guys are going to pretend this was you know, this was you know, this an error or a mistake, and they they'll shake his hand next time. But this is another part of this that I think is really important. And and Trump loves to look down
on people who buy into his stick. You know, let's remember that he said to his staff during the last administration, his own follows, they're crazy. These people are crazy. Trump has always looked down on the suckers who buy into the Trump myth. This guy's are these crypto guys, They are tech folks. But essentially he's relying on the fact that they are at a certain level fundamentally unsophisticated people
that comes to understanding that he will screw them. It's it's it's only that we can look at a fifty year history of Donald Trump's business dealings and see that in every single case, he has fucked his business partners, he has screwed his vendors, he has screwed people that that that built these projects of his and it never stops. It has never once stopped. And so these these new crypto folks who are like, oh, we're gonna buych trump coin at all, But why does how much you're just
buying him to bribe them? It's just for the bribe.
Why has everyone forgotten what Trump one point zero was, like, I mean like it wasn't even that long ago, but it seems like like, let's look back as people who were in that administration, like Rudy Giuliani was his central tenant. Yeah, I mean that guy, what even a hamane.
Look, Rudy is Rudy is now, you know, out sending desperate emails to conservative email lists. The Deep States still trying to put me in jail. All right, well maybe you shouldn't be a fucking them idiot. But look, everybody who's gone through Trump's the cycle of Trump, learns lessons. I mean, think about Sarah Hockey Standers, one of the most loyal, obsequious Trump people during and after, and is he's sending Arkansas any federal aid for these for the
hurricanes and stuff? No, or her tornadoes and stuff. No, Look at Tennessee, a loyal Trump state, do they get any help.
No.
Look at North Carolina, state that voted for Trump repeatedly, he cut off the rest of the FEMA aid for Hurricane Helen cleanup, and it's and western North Carolina is still a real mess. Roads are still out, bridges are still out. And Trump she said, no, no more for you. Everybody who who he builds a bond of trust with, he is contemptuous of them. He hates them because they trust him. He knows who he is more than they know who he is. I guess how i'd put it.
So, Yeah, it's a really important point. And I think so does that make you less despairing about the state of American democracy?
No, I still think we're in some deep water. I really do, because like it or not, like it or not, he still has three years left. And while I'm concerned about the systemic kinds of things, the Project twenty twenty five kind of stuff, that's that should concern all of us, by the way, I'm also concerned that he is so random and his brain is so broken. And again, no one was earlier on this than George Conway back in twenty sixteen, and a lot of those folks who were
saying this guy's unstable. This guy's unstable, this guy's brain is rot And I in writing a piece last week about you know, or preparing for a video piece I did on Friday. You know, can we stop lying about Trump's dementia? Can we stop? Can we stop lying to ourselves about it? I watched a couple of hours of speeches and remarks for the last three week, and I
came out of that writing leg I thought. I thought I was going to write something, you know, pretty harsh, but maybe you know, with a little bit of a flourish. I didn't have to actually had to back it down because he's so incoherent. I mean, yesterday at west Over the weekend, rather at West Point, he's out there talking about trophy wives and rambling about.
How it was the same speech. It was the same speech he gave at the boy Scout chamber, right right.
I mean, his brain does not it's not firing, so that's when he's going to do random shitty things. But those could be pretty bad for the country too.
Yeah, but there, but in some ways that's actually a little bit better than and or you know, this sort of heritage foundation super organized. None of this is three dimensional chests. It's always just him meeting the checkers. But I do, I do want to go back to the idea of his incoherence, because he was actually quite incoherent in twenty twenty sixteen. And one of the things that I remember writing about him his speaking so much was that when you started looking at the text of the speech,
it was just chalking. And that's why this White House, i think, has stopped published in transcripts.
Right and taking the prior transcripts offline. Yeah, and I'm going to have a guy next week who we did cap that they've all been captured there out there on the internet archive in other places. I'm gonna have a guy next week do an AI analysis of Trump's public speeches and statements that aren't prepared remarks and compare them to twenty twenty and twenty and twenty sixteen. Because I I, as a guy who's you know, sadly, had so much of Trump in my brain for the last ten years.
I can see the diminishment and the drop off. I can see the chaos level of his thought process is getting more and more stochastic, and more and more more and more you know, shambolic. He's really a mess, and no one wants to admit it, and no one wants to. No one wants to. You know, look, the Trump world has always had this, this powerful illusion in maga that Trump is the smartest, most you know, experienced negotiator. You're the best deal maker, the best of businessman, the richest guy. Oh,
it's all been bullshit. But when he comes out and starts herbal verbal mumble bumble, it doesn't. It's harder for them to say, oh, that's the genius. Somebody told me that getting an hour out of an interview with Hannity with Trump took them like six hours to try to get an interview that wasn't bonkers. It wasn't like Trump, you know, going off on ten minute tangents about his friend Jim in Paris or whatever it is.
Yeah, I mean, look, his inability of focus has always been a real issue. Rick Wilson, I'm going to keep you around it only will you come back.
Of course I'll come back. You know me, I'm your huckleberry.
Justin Brannan is a New York City Council member for the forty seventh District and a candidate from New York Comtroller welcome to Fast Politics.
Councilman Tsin Bran, thank you thanks for having me.
First, Hell us running for and what the race looks?
Sure, I'm running for Controller of the City of New York. The easiest way I guess to put it is if the Mayor of the city is the CEO, then the Controller is the CFO. Right, It's your job to oversee how the budget gets spent, how the pension funds are invested. The seat is open because Brad Lander, the current Controller, is running for mayor. You know, there's a lot of moving pieces and a whole bunch of people running from mayor, And obviously the mayor's race in the city is sucking
up all the oxygen. But where the second thing on the ballot the controllers race, and the election is in like thirty two days or something like that very soon.
The way it works in New York is that the primary election really decides because there aren't there isn't a really competitive general. I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit about what it means to be comptroller and sort of how you feel that you can do that job.
I guess I'll first say I would not be running for Controller if I wasn't already chair of the City council Finance Committee. So the New York City Council is the coequal branch of city government, and the Mayor's on the executive side and where the legislative side. Some days we actually feel like the coegal branch. Most days we don't, because this mayor would prefer a monarchy then to actually have to deal with the fifty one members of the
City Council. But I'm chair of the Finance Committee, where I oversee the city budget and I negotiate the budget every year for the past almost four years. Now, you know, we've been fighting like hell against Eric Adams and his false austerity cuts to our budget. And you know, I really fell in love with the process, and I fell in love with the ability to make regular people, working people's lives better by how we spend our tax dollars.
Right.
So, I've always been a big believer in getting a good return on your investment as a tax payer. The reason why people hate paying taxes is because they don't feel like they're getting anything for it.
You know, if you're paying a.
Lot of taxes and you live in the City of New York, and the garbage isn't getting picked up, and your kids, you know, the ceiling in your kids classroom is falling down, and the grass in the park is growing taller than your dog. You feel a certain way that they're taking all these taxes out of your paycheck, whereas if you saw a return on that investment, you'd say, I'll pay more taxes. The streets are clean, everything feels great.
So the controller's job is really three main things. You have to audit the city agencies and hold every tax dollar accountable. You have to ensure you know, you serve as a fiduciary to the city's almost three hundred billion dollar pension system, five very unique pension funds. So your main responsibility is delivering strong returns for retirees and investing in their future and the future of the city and all you know, people like me who are a future
city worker retirees. And I think the main thing now over the next four years, under the constant daily fresh hell from Donald Trump, is building a fiscal firewall to protect New York City and our future and our most vulnerable. And I think, you know, most people have no idea
what a controller does. But I think over the next four years, people are going to learn pretty quickly what their local treasurers and controllers do because it's going to be it's going to be an even more important job over the next four years if we continue seeing you know, these cuts coming from Washington.
Tell us like how you push back against Adams, and how right now it looks like Cuomo very likely will be the mayor. Again, nothing is a fed of Compley, but he's certainly pulling farry ahead. I wonder if you could talk about Adams created a slate of problems with his corruption. Cuomo, if he becomes mayor, will create a different slate of problems with his Cuomo ness. Talk to me about what you did with the last mayor and what you would be able to do with Cuomo to keep them in check.
Sure, So, I mean, look, the job of the controller is ultimately to serve as an independent watchdog for taxpayers. So it doesn't matter if the mayor is your best friend or your worst enemy, and your job is not to be great to it us. You know, your job is to stand up for the people, stand up for the taxpayers whose money is being spent on all these city services. So you know, the past three and a
half years. What we dealt with with the Adams administration was really from day one was this this shadow of false austerity where in the richest city in the world, we were being painted into this corner where we thought we had to choose between keeping the libraries open seven days a week or you know, funding early childhood education, you know, and our argument was always, well, that's a false choice because in a city with at the time it was one hundred and ten billion dollar budget, now
our budget is going to be north of one hundred and fifteen billion dollars and in richest city in the world, number one, people should not be struggling so hard to get by in the richest city in the world, we should not be, you know, having to choose between funding CuNi and building a new playground that needs to be renovated.
Ye why is that? Well, I think early on someone must have got in the mayor's ear and told them that the way to look tough, you know, to look like a budget hawk is you know, it makes you look tough and responsible. And I think I think the Adams administration confused from the get go, confused fiscal responsibility with austerity. Right, Like the mayor likes to talk a lot about the city's bond ratings. Well, the city's bond ratings are strong, not because you're cutting funds to the
Parks Department. The city bond rate strong because the economy is strong. So we fought back. I mean the first year it was, you know, they were crying poverty over the expiration of COVID stimulus funds, which was a problem because what happened there was they used the prior the Lazio administration leveraged a lot of COVID stimulus funds, which were temporary funds. They leveraged temporary funds to fund permanent programs. Why I don't know, but they did, and the money
started really expiring. We were like, well, now we have these programs that New Yorkers rely on and they were propped up with money that we knew was expiring.
So what do we do now.
So that was the first year. Then you had the middle two years were the migrant crisis, where the mayor came out right away and said, a migrant crisis is going to bankrupt the city. We called bullshit on that from day one. I said, the only thing that's going to bankrupt the city would be mass deportations, a migrant crisis going to bankrupt the city. Sure enough, two years later, migrant crisis did not bankrupt the city. All the cuts that the mayor tried to make were not necessary in
the first place. And you know, people were calling me the budget no shra damis not because I was great in math class, but because I was willing to call out his bullshit and say, look, I know what's there. Like the information that I have is the same information that you have. I see the tax receipts. The economy is strong and durable and resilient, and we don't have to, you know, make these tough decisions because we're not going bankrupt. So fast forward. Now you've got the threats of cuts
from Washington. So this budget looks a little bit better. This administration now, you know, obviously it's an election year and they want to make people happy, which is fine. I'm happy to take advantage of that. But you know, they are acknowledging a lot of the council's priorities. So I think we'll be in a better place with this budget. But for the past three and a half years, I've fought like hell against Mayor Adams and everybody else that's in the race never said a word, you know, until
the coast was clear. They never stood up to Eric Adams. And I think you need someone in the Controller's office who knows how to hire smart people but also is going to stand up and stand in that breach between the federal government and are most vulnerable in this moment, and you need a fighter that in that role.
Why do you speak like a normal person and not like you've been trained at McKenzie.
Because I am a normal person. I mean, you know, I'm not going to tell you I was four years old dreaming of being the Controller. Yeah, I'm just a regular guy. I mean, I didn't get into politics until much later in life. I see things through I think a unique lens of just, you know, a person who
is very disengaged with the political process. And you know, I always felt like what happened in Washington, you know, it was a bunch of old white guys with white hair, and what they were, the decisions they were making, had no real immediate impact on my life, at least as a teenager or young twenty something. It wasn't until I
really fell in love with local government. That really opened my eyes because the pace of local government was way more my style, where little old lady could walk into your office with a problem, You'd take an hour, a half hour, two hours to undo her not and send her on her way, and it was magic. It felt amazing. It just feels great to help people, and local government was the place that I could do it, you know.
And I had a very unconventional background. I played in a punk rock band for you know, for ten years of my life, and never in a million years thought I'd become a politician. And now I'm on my eighth year of you know, two terms as a city council person, and I've been able to accomplish a whole lot, passed a lot of legislation I'm really proud of, and brought back hundreds of millions of dollars back into the community where I grew up.
And it's a great job.
This is a time now where you know, a lot has changed, obviously, and I think the biggest change is that local politics at one time were sort of immune from global politics, and now as things have gotten just increasingly tribal, and we're just we're right now, we're in the Yankees Red Sox era of politics where it just doesn't matter, like where everyone just goes to their tribal corner. And unfortunately that has bled into local politics too. So
it's an interesting time. I did an interview with someone yesterday about this, you know, Trump's big beautiful bill, whatever the fuck it is about. Like, look like, you know, even if you voted for Donald Trump, you are also going to be negatively impacted by this insanity. His policies don't discriminate that if you voted for him, you're still going to be impacted by it. And it's hard to get that message through, but it's the truth.
Right, Let's talk about Universal pre K. I think it was like the one thing that de Blasio ever did right or tried to do. And by the way, can you also talk about universal Brique and then talk about who was a worst mayor of Dublasio or Adams Go?
I would say I work for the Deblasio administration, and I worked for the Department of Education under Deblasio and helped roll out UPK. Even if you hate de Blasio, clearly I'm a fan, as you could tell, right, But if you would, even if you hate him, you admit that what he did for UPK was just an absolute game changer for working families. UPK says working families easily ten to twenty thousand dollars a year. That's money that goes back into the economy. It's amazing what he did
with UPK. It's amazing. I think we need to create a universal childcare system because the days of the eight am to two pm leave it to beaver. You know, school schedule is just not reality. And frankly, it was never reality for families of color. It might have been reality for white families, but that's you know, that's something that I think right now, Raising a family in New York City feels impossibly hard and every day and this
is part of why I'm running every day. I hear from someone saying, while I'm considering moving to X lesser city because it's easier to start a family, It's easier to buy a house, it's easier to start a business, easy to put my kid into school. And we're hemorrhaging working families. And you know, Fox News or the tabloids will have you thinking that, you know, billionaires are fleeing New York City. Number one, it's not true. Number two,
we can afford to lose a couple of billionaires. What we can't afford to lose is more working families because they are the bedrock of our economy and universal child There's two pillars right now. I think of our affordability crisis, and number one, it's lack of access to truly affordable housing, and it's lack of access to universe to childcare where parents have to decide am I going to work or
am I staying home with my kids. So I've figured out, as controller, there's a way where we can create a universal childcare system. You're working to, you know, identify the necessary funding to ensure that every family has access to high quality childcare. And I put out a plan where we would actually invest five hundred million dollars from the pension system, which would get us a great return on
our investment. Audit the hell out of all the agencies that are involved in early childcare to create a universal early childcare system in the city of New York. And you've seen the studies that show every dollar that's invested in early childcare education yields like eight to fifteen dollars in economic returns like it's just a win win. It's good for the city, it's good for families, it's good
for the economy. It's a smart economic development strategy. And so the idea I have is the pension funds in the city allow thirty five percent in alternative investments. So I put out a plan to commit five hundred million dollars over eight years of childcare focused investments that would generate strong returns lasting infrastructure. And you'd use social impact bonds and CDFIs and infrastructure funds where we could do this. It's a real estate play. Basic we buy a bunch
of buildings and we prop up a childcare system. It can be done. This is another thing I talk about a lot I think in the campaign is because of the last couple of years where we've been, you know, sort of gas lit into thinking we've got to do less, you know, little with even less. We're not dreaming biginning you know, we're not this This is the city that you know brought to life Mitchell Lama and Union housing like a Lectchester and housing for performing artists, artists like
Manhattan Plaza. Like we're not dreaming big anymore. We're not We're not getting the smartest minds around a table to figure out how to solve our city's biggest problems. We're just sort of trying to live to fight another day. And I'm worried that over the next four years we can't just hide under the bed and wait for Trump to be gone.
Like.
We have to keep the laboratory moving forward, Otherwise four years from now we're going to be even further behind the eight ball. And I think the city needs to be that laboratory to keep pushing policy forward, and you need leaders who are willing to do that.
Do you think that if Democrats could talk like real people that they could win elections?
I mean, I don't know how else to be. This is just how I am.
But like this is not as a compliment to you, but just as a theory of the case.
I think there's two things.
Number One, Democrats for a long time are in the business of denying people's reality. When someone would come to them and say, I'm scared, you know, I feel like crime is through the roof. My neighborhood doesn't feel safe anymore. Instead of us responding with empathy and understanding, and instead of us saying, well, you know, why do you feel that way, Let's have a conversation about why you feel that way. We would say, you're an idiot. The data
and statistics show that crime is lower than ever. You have nothing to be afraid of. And we did that in a lot of ways where we were just denying people's reality. And if there's one thing I've learned in politics is that if someone tells you they're experiencing something, you can't tell them that they're not experiencing that. You have to lean into the demagoguery and lean in to the you know all that, but you can't just deny someone's reality. If they tell us that they're scared, you
have to talk to them in a real way. No victim or witness to a crime wants to be you know, wants to hear about data and statistics. So that's one thing. And I think also Democrats we just lack that killer instinct, you know. I think that Republicans when they have the ball, they they stab us in the neck, right, And when we have the ball, we worry about decorum and optics and lawyers and all this bullshit. It's like, look the Republicans ps when they have the ball and they have
that killer instinct. They're fighting on behalf of themselves and on behalf of billionaires. When we have the ball, we have to have the killer instinct for working people. We have to say, look, we're in power right now. We have to do as much good as we possibly can because we might not be holding the ball in two
or four years. And we didn't do that, you know, and we don't do that, and I'm worried that we're we still haven't learned that when people tell you who there are they are, you got to believe, right, And we just don't have that killer instinct. We wonder why they're eating our lunch. And this is why.
Yeah, a lot of good points. Thank you for coming on.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. No moment o fuck.
Rick Wilson, Molly Jung Fast, what is your moment of fuck?
Right? You know? My moment of fuckery this week are all these corporate CEOs, particularly in the tech world, who stood there with Trump on Inauguration Day and showed up at the White House for these meetings and have written checks over and over and over again to make nice and look. Tim Cook is considered by all sorts of people a very smart considered businessman a good leader of Apple.
But none of these guys have any goddamn excuse. This week, Trump came out and said he's going to put a twenty five percent tariff on all Apple products not manufactured in the United States. So he was angry because Tim Cook moved a lot of Apple iPhone production from China to India. There are no American iPhone factories for a reason, people, because nobody's gonna pay five thousand dollars for an iPhone.
But Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman and all these people who are in bed with Trump, they keep forgetting that when you make a deal with the devil, the devil always cheats, the devil always breaks the deal, the devil always lies about the terms and conditions. So,
you know, I want to feel bad for Apple. I'm an Apple user, but this should not come as a shock to Tim Cook and to Apple and to the rest of the tech world that investing in Donald Trump is investing in your future humiliation and destruction.
I think that's a good call. It is. I think our moment of fuckery is really everything Trump touches.
It continues to die, never fails. You know, I hope to have at least a couple of like Newtonian level rules that I could come up with. Unfortunately I've only reached two so far. Everything touch everything Trump touches dies. And of course that there are two types of people in the world, Ted Cruz and people who hate Ted Cruz. So with that, good to be with you, seeing too. Bye.
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