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 Elon Musk jumped up and down at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Do with that information what you will? We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson takes the
temperature of VP Harris's presidential campaign. Then we'll talk to Laura Gillen, who is running against Congressman Anthony di Esposito in New York's fourth District, a hotly contested race.
But first the news.
So Mary, Governor Walls did the thing that a lot of people get testy about as he went on Fox News, and I think it went pretty well. Why don't we listen to him real quick? Can you tell us what you think?
I want to talk of that abortion too, because this came up at the debate. It's been a winning argument for Democrats on many ballots. But I want to clarify what the law is there in Minnesota. Abortion Finder, a website that helps women find access, says abortion is legal throughout pregnancy in Minnesota. There is no ban or limit on abortion in Minnesota. Based on how far along in a pregnancy you are, you sign the bill that makes it legal through.
All nine months.
Is that a position you think Democrats should advocate for nationally?
Look, the Vice President, I have been clear the restoration of Roe versus way. It is what we're asking for, way to make our own the law. The law is very clear. It does not change that that has been debunked on every occasion.
Itzy, let what you signed is there's not a single limit through nine months of pregnancy. Row had a trimester framework that did have limits through the pregnancy. The Minnesota law does not have that.
This puts This puts the decision with the woman in her healthcare providers. The situation we have is when you don't have the ability of healthcare providers to provide that, that's who you end up with a situation like Amanda's Warsky in Texas where they are afraid to do what's necessary. This doesn't change anything. It puts the decision back on to the woman, to the physicians, and we know that this is simply something to be brought up.
Tis to be very clear.
Donald Trump's asking for a nation wide abortion bank, and again we don't see this.
She said repeatedly that she will not sign a national abortion band. Are you calling that just it's a flat out line.
Yes, of course, and Senator Vance has in the past said so too. Now, look, they may see this as an election issue. We see it as a right of women to make their own bodily decisions. And that's what the states like my state have the ability to put that. In states like Georgia force women to cross the border, and then we have a death of Amber Thurmot. So let's be very clear, trying to cut hairs on an issue on this is not where the American public's at.
They want the restoration of roe versus Wade. Vice President Harris said she would sign it. That's what we'll do with election.
I think a lot of people have wanted Walls to do this because he's really good at it, and also because honestly, these fucking dishonest Fox News hosts right like, clearly Trump is going to sign a national ban.
If he doesn't, it'll be shocking to me. JD.
Vance is already numerous times on various podcasts in podcasts intimated that he is going to ban abortion, that his goal is to stop abortion and we've seen Alito and Thomas both say that they'd like to use the Comstock Act to prevent the mailing of abortion pills. So obviously, yes, yes, yes, Tim Walls on Fox News put him on there every fucking day until the election. And look, we see your favorite Mayor Pete. When Mayor Pete goes on Fox News.
It is actually sometimes it's the only truth that these people see, Like Jessica Tarloff, it's not fun, but it's a necessary evil in our siloed media ecosystem. And I think it's so smart to get him up there. And the truth is, he reminds a lot of Midwestern people. I've heard this again and again of the dads they lost to Fox News.
So I think it's very smart to have him up there.
And I think he's going to continue to debunk these right wing talking points. And the reality is, yet again, like the biggest lie that Donald Trump loves is this idea that women are carrying fetuses till the you know, till they're thirty eight weeks and then having an abortion.
For yucks.
Nobody is having a last trimester abortion unless the baby is dead or dying or about to die.
And the mother too will die. That's it.
That's how it's you know, it's one percent of all abortions, and it's because things have gone so horribly pear shaped that this is the only choice for anyone. So I thought that was a really good point. And the fact that he was able to go on that show and remember those women's names, well, that blonde woman was yelling at him, good for you, Governor Walls.
So, Mollie, I feel like the mainstream media is really having a hard time with their lack of access to VP Harris and Governor Walls. She's going on Call Her Daddy this week and the Howard Stern Show, but not doing appearances with them. What are you see in here?
So this is something that people in the mainstream media themselves are quite mad about. As a member of the mainstream media, I write for Vannie Fair, I appear on MSNBC. I actually think that the Harris campaign is doing this
totally right. They don't owe the mainstream media anything. And the other thing is that our internet and our radio and our televisions are very siloed now, so for her to go on places where political people live in a certain space, right, it's MSNBC, it's CNN, it's the New York Times.
They know her.
She needs to go on the shows where she's going to be able to activate the ones, Twoes and ree is the low propensity voters. Those are the people she needs to win. So I think it's very smart for her to go on Call Her Daddy. I think it's very smart for her to go on Howardster and those are huge audiences that can produce viral moments, and she needs to be as around as possible, So I think it's very smart. She's also doing sixty Minutes, which is
traditional mainstream media. Look, there is a thing happening here which is a real phenomenon, which is because there are no gatekeepers. Because social media has taken over to some effect and killed a lot of newspapers and magazines, The mainstream media doesn't.
Have the power it used to have.
Right, You used to be able to rely on newspaper endorsements to help presidential candidates. That doesn't happen anymore, and in fact, so much so that New York Times is no longer even doing endorsements.
So I do think that for sure.
It really is a phenomenon where the mainstream media is feeling its power diminished and they're not happy about it. But we have like a little bit more than thirty days until this presidential election, and it's the election to see if we're going to have more elections. So I'd rather she goes on call her daddy and we just all take the.
L for now, agreed. So here's an interesting one. Most viral tiktoks are at a fifth grade reading level, but Trump speaks at below that. What do you see it here?
I love that you have that bit of information.
Most viral tiktoks are at a fifth grade reading level, but Donald Trump.
Is at a fourth grade reading level.
You know people on the left that love to be mad at the New York Times, and with good reason. I'm sorry, I'm speaking to my husband now. He is right to be mad at the New York Times. That's okay. I know the opinion page makes you mad sometimes. But this is an incredible story they did which took a ton of work, which is they fed into a computer all of these different Trump speeches and they were able to sort of analyze the words, the speech patterns, where
he went with this stuff. And it's quite interesting and definitely worth reading, and the analysis found that Trump speaks at a fourth grade level.
Far below that of his rivals.
And again, I don't want to say anything nice about Rohn de Santis ever, but he speaks at an eighth grade level, which is almost high school, so good for him. Trump's speech complexity has not changed dramatically as he's aged. But that said, he uses thirty two percent more negative words than positive words, which again, in twenty sixteen, he gave a speech which you'll remember famous liberal George W.
Bush described as some weird shit.
Okay, And that was when he was only doing twenty one percent of negative words. Now it's gone up to thirty two percent. He uses swear words, and he's more disinhibited, which is a sign of aging than when he ran so really interesting piece with a ton of different bylines. Peter Baker leads it, it's definitely worth looking at this piece about Trump's language.
Milly, there is really unexpectedly great economic news out this week, and I feel like it really broke the right wings Brad And says, usual.
Yeah, there are these jobs numbers that show basically that they've lowered a twelve month recession probability to five points this is from Goldman. It's a big deal, and it shows that we've hit that kind of soft landing those numbers that we had thought were impossible during the supply chain crisis.
Basically, these is a blowout.
Economic numbers, and I think that what's interesting is that a lot of the other numbers that were reversed down have now been reversed up. So the federal unemployment rate fell to four point one, which shows that the economy is resilient and that maybe the Fed doesn't need to lower rates anymore. The other the thing about it is that Republicans could not absorb this news in a way that was healthy and normal. For example, Rubio, Marco Rubio.
Who used to be little market.
Right, little marcall who used to be thought of as like a normal senator, but now because he wants to have the kind of virality or whatever it is that Marjorie Taylor Green gets. He said on X the Juggernaut of Disinformation and misinformation, another fake jobs report out of the Biden Harris government today. Rubio said sixteen of the seventeen reports have been significantly revised downwards after media helps them with their fake headlines. Quote quote quote, but actually
that's not even true. The latest jobs report shows we've actually seen that that's not true, that they've been reversed. We had a labor economist say he is just wrong and mischaracterizing the current data. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics we all know as a nonpartisan agency, they don't really give a fuck who's in power. And at least a few of the seemingly positive revisions are going to be negatively revised to the original revisions.
That's really common.
Rubio is just mad to see good news happening in the economy because he's worried it won't help Trump. Trump, of course said that all the jobs were being taken by immigrants, which is Trump's de facto on everything. So in fact, the jobs report were not fake news, they were real news.
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Brick Wilson is the founder of The Lincoln Project and host of the Enemy's List Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics.
Rick Wilson Junk Fast. How are you on this fine day.
Well, your day is better than mine because you're in California and I'm in New York.
That's a fact.
That is a fact.
But you are three hours behind, so I do have that on you. I want to start by talking about our text exchange, so because I think it's really important.
The last couple days, there's been a real vibes based media meltdown about Vice President Harris, which has included a lot of pieces by smart people that we're friends with about how she's not doing enough and how this election is slipping through her fingers the way that it felt, but it wasn't actually true because the fundamentals were different
for Hillary Clinton. But it felt to a lot of people in twenty sixteen that that last month where Hillary Clinton was fundraising and not on the trail in the way that Donald Trump was, that it was slipping through her fingers. So I feel like, if I'm having that anxiety, then our listeners are also having that anxiety. So I need you to talk them and also me at the same time, which is more bang for the book.
Off the ledge.
Here's the thing, Mally, Hillary in the last few weeks of the campaign of days was not on the air spending money in Wisconsin and other states. That is more important than showing up at four hundred interviews, you know, for the seventeenth time with the Washington Post or The New York Times or Bloomberg. The Harris team is not taking this lightly. They are pounding away in the States with massive television de buys, massive digital ad bys. They
are doing the work. This is not some twenty sixteen on repeat thing. Because they learned those lessons, they understand it. I also want to say a number of these pieces that have come out have very much had that vibe of self serving bullshit. Well, she doesn't do interviews with our outlet, therefore it must be must be about to lose.
I don't buy it. I think there are awful lot of these people who were at the Times in particular, who still haven't gotten there pound of flesh out of her, and so I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that they aren't getting the candy they want to eat. I don't think that that is a side of a doomed campaign. Look, Donald Trump hasn't led a pole in the national polls for now eleven days. This race is going his way. He's not moving any state numbers, you're going to see a lot of I
know that. Something they're doing right now. They're trying to surge all the right wing polesters Trafalgar Rasmus and lunatics.
Resputant ress mutants.
They're trying to serve a lot of poles with those people right now in order to reset the polling averages and the aggregators and the betting markets a little bit, to make it look like a closer race than it really is. I don't think this race in the electoral college map right now is done. But you'd much rather be in Haerriss's position than Trump's. They're now at the point we're talking in the last four weeks of this campaign. They still just announced their field program for Wisconsin. And
it's bullshit. It's a tempkin villa, isn't it.
The guy with the long hair of the walk Away guy.
It's that, and it's Charlie Kirk and it's Elon Musk, and it's some weird collab between all these freak show guys. And look, I just don't see this race right now at the fundamentals level. The vibes level is always going to be what it's gonna be but at the fundamentals level, at the money, at the organization level, at the media level, and at the polling level. This is not a race. If it was a national race, it would be over and done. It's an electoral college, right, so it's a
little closer. But I don't see great things in the future for the Trump people in Pennsylvania. I don't see great things for the future for them in Wisconsin. I think all the vectors are moving in the right direction. Again, close race. Can't take your foot off the gas, can't blink, can't stop. But they're not gonna do what Hillary did and say, you know, we're gonna save a lot of this money for Wisconsin because we don't need it, because
we're up three points. Again, I'm clear eyed about everything. Trump has a powerful grip over a big part of the Republican base that has never waivered, but that base smaller than it's ever been. There are more and more people listening to the messages that say, hey, if you're a Republican, you can be a Republican and a conservative and still not vote for Donald Trump. That's a great message to hear, and that.
Is what happened in Wisconsin, Right, you mean this year, yeah, in that hand, absolutely.
Yeah, Liz Cheney talk, yeah.
My organization, Our organization is pounding away every single day. Say to Republicans, this is not your values. These people don't believe what you believe. Run like hell, You'll you'll be food as you get away from the blast radius. You don't have to do this anymore. You're not stuck with this anymore. And there are a lot of Republicans who in twenty sixteen, we had a lot of quiet Trump voters and we didn't know they were out there.
They were low propensity, they were ones and twos, right.
Ones and twos. And we had in twenty twenty, we had a hand full of quiet Biden voters and they showed up, made a difference. But now we're looking at a world where I think there are some quiet Harris voters and Republicans out there. We're seeing some evidence of that polling. It's developing. Still, it's not a done deal, but this race is not what it was in the Vibe world. Ever, She's always had more of an advantage in this contest than people think she's had.
I'm hoping you could do a minute or two to talk about how much higher her favorability is.
Well, let me stay with Donald Trump. Donald Trump's always had a very interesting boundary in his polling, and you couldn't get him much above forty one percent or pretty much below forty three percent. It is risted down wall.
He had a ceiling and a floor, right.
A ceiling and a floor. Right now, Kamala Harris is she's favorable, and she's running about ten points above where she was when she got in the race, quelve points about where she was and when she got the race. So right now you have Kamala Harris with very solid favorability and you have Donald Trump with very solid negatives.
Donald Trump nationally is not a beloved figure. Okay, He's got about a six percent unfavorable ratio at about a forty three percent faith in a lot of polls, and like I said, in most polls now it's drifted down to about forty one. So you've got a much more likable candidate in Kamala Harris, and you've got a much more unlikable candidate in Donald Trump. And when you have that, that contest that had to head poles matter, they had to head numbers matter, and all these states, they're close.
I'm not gonna I'm not going to bs. They're all in the in the electoral college. But the direction of the trend line is moving her way in all these.
Places, and it continues to write.
Yeah, of course, and look, we're going to end up with an election in the electoral college where it's probably going to be you know, a half a million votes either way decide this election. And that sounds crazy, but that's how this is sort of structured. Right now. We will have to go in and be prepared for Donald Trump and his people to engage in their Shenana Gannery and their bullshit at the end of this election, to say we were cheated, we have to do a recount,
blah blah blah. But I think she's going to win this thing, Molly. The fundamentals are all in her stack and they're not moving in his direction.
Yeah.
I want to say that her team has really done the stuff that needs to be done in a way that I think, like, for example, there was all this anxiety and now she's announced that she's doing all of these really important media heads.
Yeah, the campaign is running at a very very very very high level. The campaign is moving in a lot of ways. That echoes some success stories in the Democratic Party right now, where the numbers are closer in the Southwest states, particularly that anyone had an expectation they would be. The numbers are closer in places like Florida and Texas that anyone thought they should be, and that's lifting up a lot of Democratic candidates in those places. You know,
Jackie Rosen in Nevada, Rubin in Arizona. Even as we look at the scrut in Ohio and other places, Pennsylvania's looking pretty good, Ohio's looking pretty good. And when you've got you know Rick Scott, who has spent you know, sixty five miss billion dollars of his own money in
Florida and he's tied with DMP. Now I know for a fact his people are on the phone begging for money, begging for him to put more money in the superpack because they're afraid all these things are adding up to you know, there's a broader blue surge, if not a blue wave in the country. Look, Trump has also engaged in the most desperate level of campaigning I've seen even from Trump in the last few weeks.
I need you to do two seconds on the jump, that record scratching Elon Musk jump that stopped all of our hearts and made him America his weirdest immigrant.
Discuss that expression on his face during the jump. It's seared in my mind now. But Elon Musk has gone full red pill. He's a full on trumper now. None of it, at the end of the day, outside of our weird social media bubble, will be truly consequential, except insofar as he manipulates the Twitter.
Machine, the algorithm on Twitter. But not a lot of people aren't on Twitter anymore, right, correct.
A lot of people moved to threads and elsewhere. I think Elon, as somebody jokingly wrote the other day, it's like ketamine meat adderall on the stage, you know.
And that is just a joke, is it, though? That's just a joke.
As we look at that moment on the stage, as we look at this idea that Elon is going to be this like big mover in the Maga movement, you know what, He's in the Maga movement. He's now part of it. He's now bought into it. I don't think that I've ever seen two thirsty your motherfuckers on a stage together I don't know that it means anything beyond inside the red pill works.
Right, So let's just for a second talk about the hurricane, because there is a lot of anxiety in the mainstream media that this hurricane could be there's another hurricane.
I don't have to tell you. You both live in Florida.
There's another hurricane coming that's going to hit just the state weirdly, like they're coming for Desantas.
Great to the town I was born in Tampa, Florida, like a freight train right now, it's a Cat three or Cat four on impact. It's already an area that was so super saturated and so flooded just ten days ago. Now that there's a lot of concerns that this could be a truly catastrophic impact on Tampa. And look, this is again, since they control the weather, I don't know why they're going right at a area.
I was just I was about to say, like, this is bad for the Jews. We tend not to control hurricanes during yamki Bar, but I just was curious. So, I mean, we have like these this hurricane, the first hurricane, and the second hurricane, the first hurricane. Still the cleanup is not done. There's a disinformation barrage right with Laura Lumer. It's somewhere in the close to the helm, and there are Republicans. Does Tom Tillis ever say like enough is enough here or now?
All the Republican governors, Republican governor of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, our old buddy Glenn Younkin, all of them said, FEMA's working great, We're doing our best. It's hard work, and look, I'm really angry about it, Moy. For one reason is that I know how many of this emergency operations stuff, how complicated it is, how difficult it is. There are tens of thousands of FEMA workers, National guardsmen,
You've got state emergency operations people. You've got volunteers from the Red Cross. You've got people from the rescue organizations like the Cajun Navy and South in Louisiana and Virginia water rescue people. You've got World Central Kitchen. You've got all these folks trying to do a great job down there. Unfortunately, on the MAGA side of this, they are out there lying their asses off and saying, oh, well, they can't
be rescued because immigrants took all the money. It is just so crude and stupid, and.
It's also totally fascinating, right because Trump used FEMA money for immigrants.
Yeah, exactly actly. He used FEMA money to pay for kids in cages and some other immigration stuff during his terms. But Biden has not. And the problem with Elon right now controls the largest social media site in our politics. He's been spreading this misinformation at a level that, as Trump would say, no one's ever seen before. I don't think there's a situation right now where we can do much about it. I mean, they're going to do this.
This is feeding the right wing media machine, and they've been desperate to get Trump on a new strategic tack, and this is what they're trying to do it with. I don't think it's going to work. And I'll tell you why. The practical nature of the logistics of western North Carolina and the rescue effort, you know, those folks are those folks are largely going to be offline for the next month. The roads, the comms, the cell service,
the power. It's going to be slowly rebuilt. It's not going to be rebuilt because Donald Trump is tweeting stupid shit. It's going to be in trucks in their neighborhood. But government has done a full press on them. I know people from every you know, federal agency are on the ground there trying to make this thing less of a devastating historical event and to repair it quickly. Now, I
will say this, in Florida, I'm absolutely fucking livid. I'm furious beyond words that Ron de Santis has once again fucked his own state because we have spent the last three years of his administration in a war on woke And luckily we were lesbian in school, but we highest property insurance rates in the country. We are totally unprepared for another storm of the category that Milton will be
hitting one of the largest metro areas in Florida. The current track, it's going to run through Tampa and head over to Orlando. This is not great news. This is a bad thing. And so you know, DeSantis has deployed all these Florida resources up to North Carolina in an effort to play the game of oh Vima won't help them because of the immigrants. But he's now going to be under the gun again. This is a guy who years now has ignored a gigantic red alert issue for
the people of Florida. When even Rick Scott and Marco Rubio are separating from Ron DeSantis on this next storm, that's a big deal. That's how incompetent this leadership has been and how completely arrogant he's been to think that the only thing we needed in the state of Florida was to make sure no one said that we're gay in a classroom.
Right that it turns out that that does not prevent climate change.
Strangely enough, thank you, Rick Wilson. I wanted to give you one more piece of optimistic news right now. In early voting, okay, early voting, and in early ballot requests, the Democrats are running at about a sixty percent to thirty percent ratio over Republican ballot requests and early voting requests. So that is up from twenty twenty two, and it is up by a lot from twenty twenty. The program that's been run by the Harris campaign in that regard
to get out the vote early is working. It is that fraction.
Oh, that is very good, Rick Wilson, Thank you all.
We're welcome.
Are you concerned?
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They're all available by looking up Molly Jong Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a podcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could due to this.
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Laura Gillon is the Democratic No in New York's fourth district. Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Laura, Thank you, Mollie. Excited to be here.
You are running for Congress.
Tell us what your district is, what it looks like, give us a little sort of two minute explainer on your race.
Okay, so my district is New York for it's a district on the island. It's the south shore of NASA County. It is a district that is wonderfully diverse.
It's a district I have really deep roots.
My Italian immigrant grandfather king with his young family and settled in the district in a town called Baldwin and got a job in the town of Himstead as a sanitation worker and worked on the back of a garbage truck.
My mother grew up where there is no money for girls to go to college, so she did not have that opportunity, but do their sacrifices, I was able to go to Georgetown, and in two generations we saw my family go from the back of the garbage truck to the owners CEO's office when I was elected supervisor and CEO of that same town, the town of Hempstead, which
is the largest town in America. So my congressional district, District four is largely comprised of the town of Hempstead, with the city of Long Beach added.
To it as well. So it's a district that I represented.
Already explain to us a little bit about your opponent and his recent scandals.
So look, you know, Anthony dis Gazito was just there was just reporting in the New York Times a thorough investigative report that you know, found that you know, as soon as he got into Congress, he put his fiance's daughter on his congressional payroll, which is against nepotism rules. You know, Well, let the Ethics Committee decide. But it appears that it could violate the House rules of ethics.
And then kind of inexplicably, but his mistress on the payroll with his fiance's daughter in his district office.
There is a rule in.
The ethics community that you can't, i think, be having a sexual relationship with someone who's on your role, and so it appears that that would violate the ethics role. But again we'll let the Ethics committee decide whether or not there's a violation there. But it shows a lot about his values. Yeah, I think it shows a lot about his intelligence.
It's a sitcom, but not a good sitcom.
No. But see, this is the thing, like the taxpayers were left holding the bag west thirty thousand dollars that were paid to these women and all of these those payments stopped, by the way, is because he got caught because the mistress's husband told. And this is what I think what's reported in the new York Times told the son of the fiance, and so that that's what ended
the marriage and ended the payments to these women. But the taxpayers shouldn't be paying for this, like this is the kind of nepotism cronyism that I ran to extinguish in the town of Henstead. He was peddling it there. He got reprimanded at a Supreme court for doing this kind of stuff in the town of Hempstead, and he still continued to do it in his commrecial office. Peoples
are sick of this stuff. They want epicators who are just going to go and fall problems and start making their lives better instead of finger pointing and carrying on this kind of nonsense in their office.
Yes, I am actually very excited to have you on this podcast because I heard you speak at an Emily's List lunch and you were really great, and I actually made the effort to get you because, first of all, in twenty twenty two, Democrats lost a bunch of seats that were in Biden districts or very competitive Swingy districts.
And maybe that.
Was because of the governor, and maybe it was because of the midterm, but sort of Democrats took their eye off the ball. You are one of those seats, and you have this amazing story of having worked in the district and coming from the district.
Right, Yes, I.
Mean look in twenty twenty two, I can say in my race it was a couple of things.
It was mostly lack of resources.
You thought in the race really late because nobody was expecting being combig Democrat Cathleen Rights to retire, so I had a very short runway to raise the resources you need to win an election in the most expensive media market. And then we had redistricting which kicked our primaries to August, so you know, I was I'd spend a lot of money on an expensive primary at the end of August and then start to refill my coffers in September when you're supposed to be kicking into full gear television and
try to raise money again. And no one in DC thought took this race seriously. Unfortunately, they thought it was a safe seat. We kept trying to tell them it is not safe. But the news is that has all been corrected this citing.
Yes, it really has been.
The d triple C has been and I think just really putting their foot on the gas. Talk to me about what that looks like for you. Yeah, this has been a totally different race for me. Got in really early, so I'd had that long runway to raise the resources I need to make sure we're on TV communicating with voters telling them what's at stake in this election and how important it is that they come out and vote, and that they come out and vote for me. So
we've had great fundraising. We just finished K three with a really amazing number. We raised two point four million in T three, But that money's going right out the door. I mean, it's so expensive to run these ads that you see on TV on cable, so researchers are something we always need more of and are happy to accept.
But also we have an organizing strategy that has really not been seen in Nasha County other than perhaps for the special election of Tom Swasey in February, which worked, Yes, exactly.
It worked.
It's constituency driven organizing, making sure we have we are reaching out to all our different ethnic groups, religious groups, and just engaging all these communities and getting them excited about the election and coming out to vote. I think we knocked ninety thousand doors already, and people are coming from not just this district but from other places because they know how pritically important it is that we win this seat. Because this is a seat we can win.
If Democrats come out to vote, we are going to win. We have a registration edge. We just need people to come out to vote. That's what went wrong in twenty twenty two. It's low turnout.
Yeah, I didn't have.
The resources to get people out and had this field organization. On the Republican side, they had Les Delden working this area really real hard because he knew the only way he could get to that governor's mansion is every like mad up person onlinely came out to vote, so.
He worked this area hard.
They only had midterm drop off on the Republican side of thirty thousand voters in this district. On our side, we had drop off of one hundred thousand voters and I only lost by nine seven hundred votes. If ten percent were Democrats showed up, I would be in Congress right now. So we're not letting that happen this cycle.
What I think is very interesting about these quote unquote moderate Republicans right like Desposito Lawler, This crew are pretending that they're moderates, but the reality is they go into Congress and they vote for every crazy Mike Johnson thing. Right, So they voted to impeach Biden, they voted to impeach my orcists. All of them have done the same kind of stuff that Trumpers do, right, I mean, they have
voting records. Ds Posito has a voting record that's almost the same as Marjorie Taylor Green.
Right, Yes, and he said he respects Marjorie Taylor Green.
Amazing Marjorie Taylor Green.
I don't know if you know this, but yesterday she tweeted about how Jews they could be Jews could not be Jews. Sounds like Jews as a Jew, tend to feel like she's talking about me can control the weather. I mean, so if you're I mean, so you're running against someone who respects her, Yes, said it to Jake Tapper.
I believe that's amazing, but it is. I mean, it's like, I'm surprised at how like the mainstream media is so desperate to have normal Republicans that they'll put people like ds Posito and Lawler on television when they really are not mainstream Republicans not.
He has voted and he voted for Mike Johnson to be Speaker of the House. He is as right as you can get. He sponsored the Life at Conception Act of a national abortion Band no exceptions. That the most traconian law that you can imagine, no idea he voted for him. I mean, he is so out of line with the values of this district. He even voted for that bill to restore Confederate monuments at Arlington Cemetery. Twenty percent of this district are black and brown people. Right
to restore a Confederate monument. He is not moderate. He will do whatever what his party bosses telling him to do.
That's so crazy.
But I think also it's important to realize that if Democrats are able to take back the House, there'll be a check God forbid. You know, you guys will if you are elected to Congress, certify the election and if Trump wins, which will be catastrophic for everything from climate to democracy. But do you think that you know, at least you guys will be able to provide a check on that, right?
Absolutely? I mean that is why this race, and these really top targeted races are so crucial. For our democracy because we don't know what's going to happen in the Senate.
It's a tough map.
We don't know what's going to happen for the White House because it looks like it's going to be a tight race. We can get the House back if we win the seats. These are winnable races as long as we have the resources and the people. The body's knocking on the doors to get people out to vote, because we need to have at least one branch of the government to protect us from whatever might come out of the White House or the Senate.
If we lose control of the Senate. Yeah, it's really important.
And if Democrats pook the House and Harris wins, which is what all of us who believe in democracy would like, what will happen is that you guys will be there to swear her in and to certify the election. We won't have to worry about whether or not Mike Johnson feels like certifying the election, right.
Right, or he's afraid to certify the election. It's such a crazy thing.
Tell us a little bit about what your district looks like, because it's a really interesting district.
Yes, it's a wonderfully diverse district. It's about in terms of demographics, twenty percent Black, about sixteen percent Latino, roughly seven percent AAPI, and then the balance would be white. And we had a lot of different We have the Bytowns, which is startably a very large Jewish area of the district. It's become more orthodox now. It's a very compact district. It runs from Garden City, Westberry, down to our beaches, from the Queen's Border and out to the Wantass Seaford area.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing to win in your district? It's ads, but it's also what events going around, door knocking, What are people doing for you and what are you doing?
Yeah, so we are you know, look, we are hard at work. I am in this race to win it. We are knocking on doors. We opened up six offices across the district. We're doing meet and greets, We're doing coffee meetings. We're going to start doing train stations. That's a typical way you campaign.
On Long Island.
You go to Long Island Railroad train station in the morning and top on their way to work.
So we're going to start that.
I think next week, and you know, raising the money that we need to pay for these ads and pay for the mail because that's a really important tool to communicate to voters.
What are the concerns that you're hearing?
Like?
What are people?
I mean, do people understand what a danger trump Ism is? Do they remember that? Are you hearing about inflation? What are you hearing?
Well, there's definitely one thing that has really resonated, I think since twenty twenty two, since the Dobbs decision is the real threat to our reproductive freedom. I think in blue states there is a certain complacency after dob like, Oh, we're safe in New York, So I'm not as worried about that. Now people are seeing what the aftermath of
Dobbs is. That Clarence Thomas laid it out in his concurring opinion that they're not just coming for choice, They're coming for IVF were contraception, They're going to come for LGBTQ rights. That was just the beginning, and we're seeing this play out in some of the red states now where women are dying because they're not getting health care
that they need. And so it's an issue that people know, whatever the Republicans of the fake modern Republicans are saying, now when push comes to shove and get pushed to sign a national abortion bill, if the Republicans are in charge, that is what it's going to happen. They're not fooling people on that issue. So that's an issue that a lot of people are concerned about. I mean, look, they're concerned about the cost of living. This is a really
expensive place to live. Losing that state and local tax deduction really hurts people. We pay among the highest property taxes. And you know, my opponent, Anthony Dias Canzita said he's going to get us that tax deduction back. He's been in the majority for almost two years and he hasn't. So cost of living concerns is a really big issue here. And quite frankly, the border is a really big issue.
People are really concerned about it because they saw the forty thousand migrants that were busted to New York City by Greg Abbott, a move by the way that my opponent applauded instead it was a good move to do. And they're concerned about the border. They're concerned about fentanyl coming across the border, and so it's an issue that needs to be tackled. And you know, again, this is
typical of my opponent and some of his colleagues. They're talking about it, they're campaigning on it, they're saying it's a crisis, it's a disaster. But they're the ones in power, they are in the majority, and they're not doing anything to fix the problem because they're just trying to campaign on it. Two years they've done nothing.
When Harris gave her speech at the border, she actually talked in a really detailed way about how to stop the flow of fentanyl, and she explained that there are two cartels that are bringing much of the fentanyl in, and then there are the different components of fentanyl, some of which comes I mean, it just all comes from different places.
And how you would do that?
Do you think that voters got that message and processed it, And do you think that there's enough of a like she actually has a plan to stop fentanyl.
I think it.
Needs to be amplified. I think she needs to put it out in more paid communications what her plan is, and you know, and her experience as a prosecutor and how she knows how to tackle this problem. I think I think it would be helpful for her to like really amplify that message because it is a message that is not just a top issue in my district. I'm hearing it from my other candidates and running in other districts. It's it's a real concern and it should be a concern.
Our immigration system has been broken for a long time. It needs to be fixed. We need people to get the political courage to reach across the aisle because you no matter who wins, our majorities are not going to be like they needs to be in the past because the way districts have been gerrymandered and the majority is
not going to be that large. So if you want a comprehensive legislation with the buying of the American people that's going to last and not just be thrown out when you know when the next election happens, you need to have by parties in leadership. We saw that going forward in the Senate. Right, we saw that bill. It was a hard fought compromise, but Donald Trump wanted to campaign on it, so he killed it. Was that ill perfect, probably not perfect. It didn't address certain things that we
wanted to address. It might not have bet on it be aggressive as aggressive that it should have been in some parts, but it was a compromise and it was a step forward. And what we've had then is nothing. So this is something that absolutely must happen in the next Congress, and it must be done in a bipartisan fashion. And that's what we're not seeing from the Republican members of the House. They just sat on their hands and the bill that they did pass had no input from Democrats.
Now one Democrats lined off on that bill. So that's performative politics, that's not legislating, right, right, right.
What do you think the Harris campaign could be doing better that would help you when in your discher I.
Think it's great that she's talking a lot about Project twenty twenty five and some of the dangerous things in there. I think talking about the border and articulating how she's going to work to solve that crisis. I think that and what executive power she will bring to the table to solve to try to help work with Congress to solve the crisis, I think that would be very helpful.
Yeah.
Do you think that voters understand that there was a real agreement and Trump killed it or now?
I do think that they understand that I think that certain people don't care. I think people who are undecided or more open minded about it can see quite clearly. I mean, this is not just this is not hyperbole, This is information.
This is what happened.
So and you have Republicans saying like this was one of the most conservative bills that we could have passed ever, and they killed it like their own plan is calling them out.
Yeah, James Langford from Oklahoma, thank you, thank you, thank you, Laura, thank you so.
Much, Noon Rick Wilson, Malla Jeong Fast.
Do you want to know what my moment of fakery is?
I certainly do.
There's a member of the Trump family who.
Despises me in a way that I feel Eric should, but I'm just not even on his radar. Do you know who that member the Trump family is.
That'd be Cochley von Felsson.
It would be fayle Son von felsn Don Junior, who recently tweeted that I was getting my own show. It was not true, but it was so infuriating to him that it captured his imagination anyway. Read a piece in The Wall Street Journal by Molly Ball where she says that actually the New gatekeeper of Donald Trump. Well, in twenty sixteen, it was his beautiful and totally, i want to say, enabling daughter.
Definitely not the subject of any bizarre of his incess fantasies.
Yes, and also not complicit in all ways that she's now moved on to Miami and trying to make it in high society. Her brother, who is really bubble down on the basist instincts of trump Ism, is now, according to this piece in the Wall Street Journal, his daddy's gatekeeper. You know, I was having a few days where I was like, I'm definitely not going to get MO. I'm not on anyone's radar. I'm not going to get MO. But wow, I'm definitely going to get MO. So that
is Donald Trump Junior sending me to Gitmo. Is my moment of fuckery? Rick Wilson, what's your moment of fuckery?
Leela Suckery? Is the entire maga right wing media ecosystem right now that are lying their asses off about what's happening in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. These people are sick. They are stoking these insane conspiracy theories that range from Marjorie Taylor Green saying they control the weather, to these lies that immigrants are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but everyone else in the zone of the hurricane is only going to get
seven hundred and fifty dollars. All these lies are ratcheting up a sense of despair and these conspiracy for no reason. And you're seeing how thoroughly effective the right wing media ecosystem is at breaking the mental constructs that should underpin people's thoughts about the world and turning them into this bizarro fantasy land. I mean, and I know they don't fucking care. It is horrible for this country what they're doing.
It is terrible for this country. And Elon is the chief these rocket fuel for this stuff, and he has been a promulgator of some of the worst and most destructive of these stories. So that's my moment of fuckeray.
Thanks Rick Wilson.
Yuh.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds in politics make sense of all the chaos. If you enjoyed this podcast, please send it to a friend or an enemy and keep the conversation going