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 Secretary of Education Linda McMahon won't rule out URFK Junior taking over school vaccine programs. This is insane. We have such a great show for you today. Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson jobs by to talk to
us about Trump's dismantling of the Department of Education. Then we'll talk to Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth about Trump's attempts to bully universities into his policies.
Smiles.
Googling around to see if activists have ever brought down a Senate majority leader, and I'm going to shock you, but I could not find any existence of precedent for this. So it does not really shock me that Schuber is basically saying I ain't stepping down.
Here's the deal. People are mad at Chuck Schumer. People are really mad, and actually the base and the people who are protesting everywhere, and by the way, hey, this is not getting the kind of mainstream media coverage that it should. There's a lot of protests going around and there's not getting a ton of coverage. But people are protesting and they are really, really really mad. I took Schumer. Now they're mad because they feel that they didn't get
anything right the truck. Schumer did not get anything for the cr This is because we've seen Republicans get things for CRS. Right, We've seen them threaten to crash the economy, to blow through the death ceiling, and we've seen people get stuff and Schumer didn't get anything. Now, that said Schumer was when it went through Congress. Once this bill had gotten to the Senate, it was going to be very very hard to stop it.
Right.
Once the bill had gotten to the Senate, it was odd Democrats to shut down the government. Had it not gotten through the House, that would have been a different story. But again, Elon and Trump together are votes for Mike Johnson.
Right.
We know this to be true. We know that Elon is donating to people in the Republican Party who do what he wants, and this has worked incredibly well for Trump and his people. So could Schumer do more? Yes? Should Schumer do more? Apps fucking lutely, here's another problem with us. There is no one right now who wants the job. If a Democrat wants to take this job. They need to stand up and say I want this job. Now. Is that Chris Murphy, I don't know, Maybe it is,
maybe it's Brian Shotts. I mean, there are any number of people who could take this job, but if they're not out there trying to get the job, then there's a feeling that maybe no one wants this job. So I do think that this only works if someone comes forward and says they want the job, which again, Chris Murphy could absolutely do. So could there are any number of Democratic members of the Senate who could. But until
that happens, it's going to be hard. And I think that if you want to stand up for democracy, you need to be brave.
So this is another disturbing deportation. The niece of a green cardholder who's been the US for fifty years has been detained by Ice.
Yeah. I mean, we're just going to hear a story after story like this. You know why, because this is what we're doing, Like, this is what we as a country are now deporting people without checking into their status. We're deporting first and asking questions later. So here's the question. Here's sixty four year old aunt called Anti Lynn first detained. She's sixty four, detained by Custom and Border Patrol at Seattle Tacoma International Airport. She was returning from a trip
to the Philippines. She immigrated to the US from the Philippines when she was get ready fourteen. So she has lived in this country for half a century, right, half a century. She is now in a Northwest ice detention facility. She has lived in this country for half a century. Okay, by the way, it's a ice processing center which is privately owned by the Geo Group, a private prison company. Right, they're fifteen hundred other detainees. It's been open since two
thousand and four. Her family has not been told anything by ICE. She has a non violent conviction for embezzlement, which is probably why she came up in the computers in the first place. She was in a halfway house for thirty days and she has a sixty four hundred dollars fine. This is what it is. So a sixty four year old woman is in a private prison, an ice detainment center. How does this make America great?
I don't think it does.
Neither does the richest man on earth, who's going to sue everybody who talks about him into submission to not say anything about him, as is evidenced by Elon Musk promising a lawsuit after ex Congressman Jamal Bowman called him a Nazi.
This is one of these things. It turns out that Elon is actually not a free speech absolutist. He was just a guy who wants the people he agrees with to get elevated and not the people he doesn't agree with. You know, it's funny because it's like all of these free speech people didn't like certain types of speech. I am not surprised by this one bit there. He's going
to keep doing this. And look, Musk and the far right have had a lot of success with suing people for saying things they didn't like, so none of us should be surprised by this. This is going to keep going, Bowman said on Thursday and CNN the American people do not trust Musk because Musk is incompetent. This is going to keep going.
Speaking of bad legal news, so this seemed to be the real top line headline for a lot of people in the legal world of scary things that well, I'm gonna be honest, this is a little bit about my pay gread Could you explain it?
Trump targeted this law firm that is called Paul Weiss. It's a big blue chip law firm. They represented people who tried to prosecute Trump or criticize Trump or whatever the crime quote unquote was. Paul Weiss made the decision that a lot of billionaires have made this sort of decision that they thought that if they went to Trump and they said, oh, mister Trump, we we love you, we are sorry we ever represented someone you didn't like,
that Trump would stop targeting him. This executive order targeted the firm and it could have cost them business. Now, Paul was a huge law firm makes gazillions of dollars. They didn't want to fight with Trump. They thought it would be easier and better just to give up and maybe they could manipulate him into doing what they want. But here's the thing, and this is what we see again and again, just like what we saw with Columbia.
You give into a bully, you don't win. These billionaires think maybe that they can manipulate Trump into getting what they want, and maybe Elon can, but a lot of these people are just going to see that Trump is just going to bully them. More so, Paul White happy to go along with whatever I said that they would donate forty million dollars in free legal work for things of Trump believes in. That is a totally incredible I'm
fascinated to see what they end up doing. You know, the head of Paul Whites went into the White House and tried to suck up to Trump. What we know from Trump one point zero is you do this and it doesn't work. If it worked, that would be one thing, But that is not what happens here. George Conway, frequent Trump critic and friend of this podcast, they have a moral duty to defend the very system that has allowed them to make the kind of money that they make.
These law firms are now basically so profit driven that they are putting their own economic interests above that of the system. Conway said, this is not only morally appalling and morally fraud and just contemptible, but in the end of the day, it is self defeating. That's right, because if the rule of law doesn't matter, which Paul Weiss is saying it doesn't, then why do we even need lawyers? And that is a real question, and good for George
Conway for saying it. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project in the host of the Enemies List. Welcome back a few fast politics, My buddy, Rick Wilson.
Molly John Fast. Lovely to see you as always.
So it's Sunday, week nine and Trump's America Sunday.
Sunday Sunday. That kind of thrills the spills. You're the fans want to see you in here.
Yes, things are going great.
The world is really really doing well.
I mean, I feel like other countries finally respect us.
You know, we've waited so long to be respected again, and until this very day, until the magic of our of our Golden Age economy, our robust system of the rule of checks and pounds protecting the rights of others, the checks and balances that other nations only could dream of achieving. Until today. Honestly, I mean, no one, no one could have anticipated that Donald Trump would have ushered in this era of stability, prosperity, comedy, goodwill toward men.
I'm sick of winning, personally.
I'm exhausted by the winning, so much winning.
So you're listening to this, you're driving to work. It's Monday. You have another week. Let's just get them up to speed about what happened this weekend. You tell me if you think this appropriate. Members of Trump's administration clowned themselves on national television trying to defend the indefense of ball.
I think that's really part one of the most perfect summaries of this weekend I could have imagined, because even on some of their more friendly outlets, there seems to be creeping into the dialogue a little bit of like, really, really, what you do?
What? Yeah? I mean, It's like, I feel like a good gauge for how bad things are is Rupert Murdoch. If Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and New York Post are saying things like we implore the president to stop fucking up our stock market and doing da da da, that is an important data point.
I will say that the important data point that we're deriving, especially from the Rupert verse, begging Donald Trump to cut the shit out, Begging Donald Trump to put Elon Musk on a leash, Begging Donald Trump to stop the threats to invade Greenland.
You don't want to invade Greenland.
Yeah, Look, I still believe we would be greeted as liberators.
Oh yeah, they love that.
But that's the problem with Greenland is it's so close, it's so tempting, it's so sparsely populated. I would like to make a proposal. If we do invade Greenland, I believe it should become the center of the Maga universe. I believe that is many of the trust stars reality.
Here, buddy, all right, all right, all right, so I'm not going to let you get too far off the leash. Here, Betsy DeVos. Today on CNN, we had Steve witkof, you know, making international pieces harder than I thought.
Can I just say this about Steve wick.
Cough, Yes, please.
If they were going to hire somebody who was such a profound sucker for Vladimir Putin's sewage pipe tidal wave of lies and bullshit, who has such an evident lack of any historical knowledge, it's a good choice for that this job. I mean, just hire somebody direct from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Because with Cough he did try to wander through his talking points. They're like, oh, the don boss, And I'm sorry, guys, it's only four
fucking items. Okay, Just want to memorize a little thing here and there.
They did not send their best nor their brightest.
No, no, they didn't. And as for Betsy de Vas, let's be very very honest about this. There is a I believe an inverse correlation between your desire to burn down the Department of Education and your education, because this is another area where even some of his most passionate followers are like, yeah, my state is not great on education.
Could you not like completely? Because unfortunately they're learning that the main job of the Department of Education is not to promote wiganism or lesbianism, or paganism or any other is in their catalog of horrors. It's actually the fund of some education programs in the States. Oh oh, oh, who.
I think that's correct. I also think that part of what we're seeing here is, you know, they're moving fast and breaking things. They've broken a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff the courts have said they can't break. We have you know, the deportation stuff. I mean, what is the thing that keeps you up at night?
Go the courts?
But the courts have stayed.
Oh no, what I'm saying is Trump ignoring the courts? Yeah, right now, to my mind, that is the universal problem matrix, both Trump trying to burn down the courts and his people actively now trying to do what they did before January six, which was to fill the minds of maga's up with the idea, just as they did before January six, that they said the election is stolen, it's corrupt. The communists took over all these things that scare MAGA voters.
Right now they're saying these judges are enemies of America, they are unpatriotic, they're corrupt, they're bought off, they're dangerous, they're trying to destroy Donald Trump. And I think we historically have seen a pattern where when you tell MAGA voters this or are not those sharpest knives in the drawer, and when it comes to interpreting whether Trump is telling the truth or not, they freak out and bad things
start happening. Right I think we should be very wary that we don't end up with judges in more danger than they're in when they start saying, you can't do this, Donald, and Donald does this, we move to the contempt phase of the courts. I really am very concerned it hasn't quite gotten as bad as it's going to get. In that space.
No, I think we can all agree that things are going to get worse before they get better.
Yeah. I mean, look, someday the reaper will take Donald Trump from us and the obituary will be read and people will go, Okay, wow, we got through it. But I don't know that that day is going to come without a lot more pain first, right.
I would also say, like nobody wants anything bad to happen to anyone. We all want the to end peacefully.
I don't necessarily agree with that, moll. I think a lot of Republicans want bad things to happen to Trump's enemies.
Right, right, right, that's certainly true.
I don't want people to pretend that we are dealing with the my honorable friend problem.
We still have a lot of stuff that's coming down the pike pretty quickly. Right. They're going to try to pass this tax cut bill. We'll see what happens. We have measles is still growing in Texas.
In the year of Our Lord twenty twenty five. There is no goddamn reason for measles to be an issue, except for the man in charge of America's healthcare system now believes that measles can be treated with cob liver oil and vitamin A.
He's really into cops liver oil. But right now we have Texas cases now confirmed in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhde Island, Vermont. So do me a favor or get your measles vaccine.
Please, everyone go get your measles vaccines. They are affected and they are safe. There is nothing in this world I find more disappointing and disheartening than the idea that millions of Americans believe that a proven and safe vaccine that has saved countless lives is now dangerous for political reasons.
What do you think are like the new fake challenges that Trump world will be confronted with this week, besides ending the war in Ukraine in one day.
As you can see from Witkoff this weekend, as he said, a piece is harder than we thought. Blah blah blah. I don't think we are anywhere near the end of the Trump administration getting suckered by Vladimir Putin. They have only begun to be suckered by Vladimir Putin. They're barely even off the out of the takeoff phase of this
flight of being suckered by Vladimir Putin. But one of the things I think is really important to keep an eye on this week is the market last week sort of got the message from Trump World We're going to back off of some of this trade work garbage. Don't worry. You know, we're feeding the rubes. You know, this is all boob bait for the Rube class. Blah blah blah. And the market got a little calmer on Friday.
Are any of these tariffs actually enacted?
Here's the other part of that is they are still mostly mostly on the This kicks in in thirty one days, fifty days, ninety days, that sort of shit. That hasn't made it better for a lot of these Wall Street folks and for a lot of companies in America who have to plan out a long way ahead of time, who have to do this sort of thing not days in advance, but a quarter or one hundred and eighty
days in advance. I had someone yesterday tell me that he says, the most frightening thing that nobody has picked up on here yet in Trump Land is Walmart and Target and hobby lobby and every other big retailer starts ordering their stuff for Christmas in May, the first week of May. It arrives in July, and goes on sale in late September. So all that holiday merch that all
these companies are going to be flooding into America. They're rushing to do a lot of things now so that they don't get, you know, caught up in a few weeks with much higher prices for consumers. And I think that this is something that we just have not we have not processed this appropriately in the market yet, because this is kind of poisonous. It's kind of really super dumb.
Right, they completely insane tariffs I want to talk about. We're Chuck Schumer is right now on Sunday shows. Well, I think this is important. It's important because, like you know, I was texting with an activist friend of ours in Wisconsin who was saying, you know, they have a big election in Wisconsin. The Supreme Court judge Ship talked about it on Substack when we did a subset show together on Friday.
Not which people seem to like a lot. I know, while we're back with you folks on.
Friday Fridays, on Mondays.
On any others all the days of the week.
On YouTube's what we talked about, which I think you know, is this big Wisconsin judge Rays and I was talking to I always feel like I see protest, but I live in a blue city in a blue state. Have you seen any protests?
For you, I live in a blue city in a red state, but I have not seen any protests at scale. But I will tell you two quick stories. This weekend down in Annapolina Luna's district in Clearwater, Florida, our friend Whitney Fox and Eric Swalwell did a town hall because Annapolinaluta won't do it, and she lives in the district in Florida with the highest per capita number of Social Security recipients in the country, and she refuses to meet with them and answer their questions. They ended up with
these people crawling the walls. In Tallahassee this weekend, a group not with it, not with any leadership from any of the visiting congressmen, but a group got together to ask Congressman Neil Dunn to meet with them. He refused, and they had about three hundred people at a VFW hall here in Tallahassee. Because this is an area with a lot of veterans, it's an area with a lot of folks on social Security, and they're not getting answers
from the Republicans. I think the Republicans do not understand what's happening these meetings and these town halls that they're blowing off, that they've been told by the leadership in the Republican Party, don't do it. You don't have to do it. These people are nobodies. You can ignore them. I think they're realizing you can't ignore all these folks. You can't just say it's all it's all astro turf.
There's nobody real here that's bothered by this. Now, folks, there's some real folks that are bothered by it, that are scared of it, that are every day right now looking at you know, whether or not they're going to be able to eat next week, and they are, they are terrified.
I've run into a bunch of different protests just walking down the street, run into protests. I have friends who protest every weekend, so that seems like a big deal to me. And then the other thing that I'm seeing, and again, you know, this is all anecdote at all, right, but I think there's a lot of people who are sort of starting to tune in, which is in my mind good. I think there's a lot of feeling that,
you know, this wasn't exactly what they thought. And you know, I think that Trump really benefited from this amnesia from the pandemic, sure, and so people sort of didn't remember what he was like. And now people seem angrier than they did, even because remember, he had sort of very normal poll numbers when he was first reelected, even much better poll numbers than he had the first time. And I think there's a feeling now I think people sort of see it.
I could not agree more. I think people right now are having a really tough time reconciling the promises of Trump for economic stability and prosperity and everything he's done. And I don't mean this, folks, just as a critique of Trump, even though it is. But everything Donald Trump promised to do that would be motivating and economically helpful to his own people, to his own base, to his own voters, he has done the exact opposite over and
over again. That is hurting him. I think it's relevant to the damage that he's doing to himself politically and to his people. I don't see if you're a Maga voter right now, Yes, to troll the Libs and to own the Libs and all that other garbage, you're going to say. No, Trump is perfect. I'm so happy. But those numbers are not showing up in the survey work, in the polling. They are very unhappy on the economic front,
on the trade war. That is becoming something that is very hard for them to articulate and argue even to themselves.
Yeah, talk to me about what you're seeing with that, because that is really interesting.
We came out of the field this weekend and Wisconsin related and the data really Yes to Trump voters still love Trump. They love Trump. Trump voters love Donald Trump. But when you describe the trade war policies that are hitting them in the face, they are angry. They are scared to death. They are especially if they are working or working middle class voters, especially in agriculture or in heavy industry. And that's you know, that's and that's a
meaningful thing in Wisconsin. That's motorcycles, that's car, that's auto parts and auto you know, infrastructure stuff. They are really scared.
This is something from what I understand the polling I have seen. My sense is this, they hate Elon.
Yes, let me take this to the next phase. They think Elon is a weirdo. They blame him for the chaos in Washington. They think he has caused this, and they're starting to believe that Elon Musk is hurting Donald Trump. As we know, there is nothing in the world that Trump folks are more sensitive to than anything that hurts Donald Trump. He has benefited, I think, a little bit from Elon as a buffer for a little while. But
I also think that that buffer has a limit. It's got It's like a filter that gets full eventually, and and you know you're gonna have to replace it. And does Elon control Trump because of the money and everything else? Yeah, there's a big argument for that. Does Trump have a self preservation instinct like no other creature I've ever seen in politics? You bet he does. There's going to come a day soon when Susie wils has had five seconds alone with Trump and she says, mister President, we all
love Elon so much. We're very worried he's hurting you. And here is Tony Fabrizio on the phone to tell you how much Elon is hurting you, wouldn't you like to have a majority in Congress for the last two years of your term because if you don't, this is going to kill you. And look, Trump does a lot of irrational things, but when it comes to protecting his own interest, he is highly rational. And I think that's where we're going to end up. Your guess is as
good as mine. But if Elon thinks that the Wilson rule of politics, of everything Trump touches dies has ever failed, he is mistaken. He can take the same whack all these other people have taken. It's not going to be hard. And Trump will just say one day Elon was very success, We thank him for his service, and that for Trump is like the nicest way he can end it. And Elon has to realize that's the nicest way it could possibly end for him. There's another way where Trump is
punitive and nasty and shit gets ugly. While most people think that would never happen. Trump is also the scorpion on the back of the frog over and over again in our history, where even people who he depended on, who depended on him, who had this relationship with him, who thought I'm invulnerable. I'll never be I'll never be out of the picture. Ask Steve Bannon how that worked out. Ask Kelly Ann how that worked out. As Roger Stone,
how that worked out. They have a value when they have a value, and when they don't have a value, he slits their throats and throws them off the back of the boat for the sharks.
Michael AS Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and the author of The Student, A Short History, Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Michael Roth, glad to be here.
I'm so happy to have you here. So you're the president of Wesleyan University, where I briefly went to college. Do I get to be an alumni even if I dropped out?
You know why the power is invested in me? I make you an alum.
Oh my god, amazing. I'm steps away from an honorary bachelor's which is the dream for me. This is a moment when Trump world has It's funny because it's like my grandfather was arrested by McCarthy the house in American Hoovac. He was jailed, he was blacklisted, and the red scare was this war on the intelligentsia. We should have seen this coming the war on academic institutions. But he's here, and it is loud and it is real, and you are the only college president so far to have stood
up for it. Why are you different than everyone else?
It feels like the we're questions for passoversion.
That's right.
You know, there are others who spoken a few. Patricia Maguire, who's the president of Trinity Washington University is a college in Washington, d C. She's been very vocal and very thoughtful in her opposition to these policies. And there's a guy named Michael gave In at his Delta College and in the Midwest Community College. I want to make sure that these guys have been fighting, and they they're at small places and standing up.
For a trait.
And the President Princeton, he came out with an article in Atlantic this week talking about the danger of the Trump administration's intervention in Columbia. I'm not entirely alone, but I am interested in Moline. How many of the folks in the press are interested in what we were wearing when we were attacked kind of thing I mean focuses on like why are president is not responding rather and why is the government behaving like a tyrannical would be totalitarian regime.
That's to be I agree, and that contempt prior to investigation is uncalled for. I'm glad to see Princeton now, especially because you know a lot of these Ivy League institutions have enormous endowments, right, which are set up to get an institution through a period like this. We may have lost sight of that, but they're not for swimming pools and stadiums, therefore protecting taught.
Well they are, But you know, I think the trade off that any school has to go through is that the endowment is supposed to be there forever, and so if you spend it in a sustainable way, it keeps up with inflation and with your spending. So you can give one thousand dollars gift, you spend a couple of bucks every year, it's still one thousand dollars, still generating
a couple of bucks every year. If you spend five hundred all of a sudden, you get through a rainy day, then you're not going to ever recoup that initial gift. So I think that schools do have a trade off. I say that knowing that some of the schools are
extraordinarily wealthy, and that they do have resources. But one of the interesting things about this is that people are being becoming more aware that how invested the United States government has been in the research dimension of higher education, and that has served the country really well. I mean in terms of creating new drugs and new technology, transportation, commerce, and all kinds of ways in which the pact between the government and the university has been we will fund
a lot of stuff for you guys. You can have the freedom to do the research you want, but many of the byproducts of that research will go on to contribute to the public good. And over many many years now,
whoever was the president could have been a Republican. They more or less respected that, you know, in other words, not telling people how to do their research, because the government doesn't know how to do the research, but to give money so it happens, because it makes America stronger, makes the economy stronger, makes science better, makes medicine better. And what Trump has done, quite extraordinary, really is to
say I don't give a shit about that. You guys are nice to me, I'm gonna take your money away. And it's been frighteningly easy so far for him to do that, because up until now people have just respected the norm that you don't do that. And of course President Trump his respect for norms is very small.
So we're both choose and liberal ish. I mean, I would say I think of myself as you know, liberal, but not wildly liberal. What Trump the administration they are rationale for deporting people, for taking away grants. Is anti Semitism. Okay, talk me through this.
I mean, yeah, it's nonsense. I mean, it's a nonsense reason I tweeted yesterday. I think it was that the United States has decided to cut off all to Israel because there was a massive demonstration in Jerusalem. You know, Jews demonstrate. That's one of the things we do, you know, we go to demonstrations. And you know, my daughter texted me last I hope she wasn't myself. My daughter texted us last night and said, look, mommy daddy. She's twenty seven. But she said, the rabbi that bod mitzn Me is
leading a protest at Foley Square. And there was a Rabbi Goldenberg, you know, leading a protest. Now I'm gonna say Rabbi Goldenberg is anti Semitic, you've got to be out of your mind. On the other hand, of course there's anti sematism, and things at Columbia were Jews last year, especially for many Jews, were really difficult. And I think that the getting a handle on campus politics and the rights of students, faculty, and staff both maneuver around a
campus without being intimidated. I think it's really important. And a normal administration that was concerned about anti simptism would say, Okay,
what are you guys doing to make it better? And they have done a whole bunch of things, maybe not out of good maybe I don't know enough, but you get to work together to improve the procedures at the university so that when some antisemitic action happens, like a Jewish spit on because he's Jewish, or Jewish kids are not allowed to go through a certain part of campus because they might be zion as well. You've got to stop that from happening. And the government should help the
school stop that from happening. And I think that was in process already. What we have here is I think just the government flexing its muscles to show it can really screw things up. The trin administration cares as much about antisemitism at Columbia as it cares about swimming records at penn They just canceled a couple one hundred million dollars of contracts with Penn univers Pennsylvania because a year
or two ago they had a trans woman swimmer. And this is really saying, we can do whatever the heck we want.
Four hundred million dollar grants at Colombia. Colombia has a hospital, it has a medical school. You know, there's four hundred million dollars. They're not grams for protests, right, they're grands for stem cell research or I mean, so, I think that's a really important point, Like none of what's happening is actually affecting the things they even say it's affecting absolutely.
So what you have is you'll have all these Jewish scientists getting fired because the funding went away, and others getting fired, and you know, you're working on diabetes or leukemia and your work's thus it's really quite astonishing. I just was on a call this morning with some people out on the West coast and they were saying, at University of California, San Francisco, the medical school of the University of California. They haven't gotten any payments from the
government since the inauguration. Now UCSF is deeply involved in the most sophisticated kinds of cancer research, which means some people are getting drugs and trials to see if they can cure their leukemia for their lung cancer, and then the drug stops because there's no money. And so this is such an extraordinary disruption of the best research system
in the world, you know, the one in America. I mean, everybody around the world recognizes, some with envy, some with admiration, that the scientific research ecosystem of the United States is the greatest, has been the greatest. But when you put it under ideological threat like this, it sends a chill through the entire international scientific community.
I want to talk about this, but I also want to talk about Mood Khalil. He is a grad student on a green card, married to a citizen pregnant. This is the kind of thing where you may not like the protests, you may not like you may not believe in any of this, but you do not want people in Louisiana camps not charged with anything but vibes. So what does this mean?
Yeah, This is again an extraordinary abuse of power, and the playbook is clear. They pick on someone who many Americans would find distasteful. To find the politics of this guy distasteful, and just like the people they deported recently against the court order, is a bad guy. You know, he was engaged in protests that many Americans would find wrong.
I find it wrong, But of course it's much worse to have such a person subject to arrest and deportation because you don't like what they believe or do they think. He didn't do anything criminal. He's not been accused of doing anything criminal, and so what you have instead is this ideological test being imposed on a permanent residence. They seem to have thought he was still a student when
they came for him, and then change their story. And then we have the nephrologist as I think she's a kidney transplant specialist at Brown, who was sent back to Lebanon. These are interventions in education meant to scare the hell out of people so that they don't stray too far from the leader's ideology, and maybe working in that regard, because I think it's that if they can take Maku Khalil and just take them and put them in Louisiana without any charges. What's to stop them from doing that
to anyone else? And we have heard other horror stories of people being arrested or detained for a while with very unclear as to why. The only thing we could do about is speak up about it and said, this is not this is not the America we want to live in.
Right, this is using the quest against anti Semitism to advance as oratarianis.
So absolutely this is you know, anti anti semitism from the Trump administration is a tool of convenience. I mean, how many there aren't that many trans athletes. You can't ride that horse wherever, you know, I mean, I can't choose a group that many Americans find it hard to understand, or an issue like trans women in high school sports. Reasonable people may have different views about how fair it is, but demonized group and then use the demonization of that
group to increase your own power. And that's what this anti anti semitism is doing, because you know they love anti semis. It's extraordinary and I'm writing something about this now and for Jews to go along with this as many are doing. I got the nastiest notes I've gotten about. My interventions have been from other Jews because they hate this Colia's views. And they said, well, if I hate them, I must find a reason to silence him. Oh, you don't need to find a reason to silence him. But
this is the authoritarian playbook, Emali. I think you do trans people's anti anti semitism, and these are attacks on civil society, on places like colleges and universities that have independent sources of allegiance, information expression. You make them line up, and then after that it'll be businesses like law firming.
Well, the businesses seem delighted. The billionaires. I was really impressed with the cowardice of the billionaire class, Like these people have millions of dollars, right, they are by definition above, you know, they can have citizenships, they can jump on airplanes. Those guys were the first of coward They were like, you know, is there a chance for a tax gut? Okay, we love this guy.
Yeah.
They weren't encowering. They were lining up for the feedbay. There's a lot of money to be made in an administration that has send every signal that restraints on corruption are gone. And so well, Columbia announced that it's Art department is making a movie about the First Lady, just like Amazon, or make a huge donation to some fund, you know, the Donald Junior Fund for Trophy Animals or something.
These are guys realize a lot of money to be made, and you know, they see what President Musk is doing and they want to get on board. And I do think there will be others, you know, they haven't raised their hands yet. I do think there'll be others who will find it appalling to see these American freedoms eroded. Not just universities, but it'll be libraries, It'll be purchase
some synagogues and chambers of commerce. These are all parts of civil society that they depend on the government for some things, just like we depend on the fire Department and we depend on the fire Apartment. Doesn't mean we all have to actually find out what the fire department chiefs politics are. We have independence and entanglement, but Trump is taking away the independence or means to take away the independences.
So it seems so, what do you think is the best way for citizens to push back to protect American norms and institutions organize?
I mean, I do think that people have to find friends and allies and then allies who weren't their friends, to defend this sector of freedom, the space of deliberation, conversation that shouldn't be squashed by governmental ideology. So I've been trying to talk as well to conservatives and people who think of themselves as really American patriots and believe in American freedom rather than a central government that tells you what to do, because these, I think are going
to be very important allies going forward. And that's hard because at universities, you know, a lot of people were incentivized to be extraordinarily critical of the United States, and you know, that's the way it goes, especially in my world of the humanities and interpret of social sciences. But I think we see how important these freedoms have been.
We've taken them for granted, at least I've taken them for granted, and now I need to some may a cult book, you know, like, yeah, I've been very critical of the United States, but I need those good old American values to protect me against the regime that is really antithetical.
To those values.
And I know, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, these are things that a few years ago my smart friends on the left, and so there is no such thing as freedom of inquery. It's always a product of the Panaptacon, which it pushes surveillance down on people so that they you know, I could do that stuff, you know, but gosh, we need good old American freedoms to defend ourselves against the central government that is so powerful and that is running amok.
Yeah. Michael Ross, President of Wesleyan University, thank you.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Weally drunk fast. Is it time for the moment of fuckery?
It is always time for the moment. So Rick Wilson, what is your moment of fuckery?
My moment of fuckery is I think one of the most callous and hardless and terrible things I've ever seen on Twitter. And I was around on Twitter for fourteen years until Elon banned me, so I've seen it all.
Oh, that's right, you're no longer you're.
Yeah, I've been banned from Twitter for life, for just for now. I have two emails from Twitter. One says unless you delete the tweet, you're suspended forever or indefinitely, and one says you're suspended for thirty days. I don't know which is which thirty day email came first. I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that Elon is a gutlass pussy. But anyway, moving on, he's also one of the cruelest and most heartless human beings I've ever seen, because he tweeted this weekend my son's
Davier was killed by the woke mind virus. Molly, I think, honest to God, the Rosetta stone, the fucking rosebud of Elon Musk is that he has a trans kid. I asked the question that like a year and a half ago on in an article like who red Pilled Elon? And the longer I've considered it, the more I've come to understand that that is what has made him who the monster he is. And I got to tell you when I read that, I'm not on Twitter, but somebody else sent me a tweet from my friend Matti Timmer,
who's lost a child to suicide two years ago. She and her husband Jeff are dear friends of mine and they were absolutely devastated, just heartbroken in a way. Maddie had I think the best response of anybody, and I saw on Twitter to it, she said, this is obviously from a man who has never actually lost a child, especially a grown child. Look, I hope that some shred of humanity in this guy someday emerges, because nobody benefits
from that. It's just gratuitous and shitty, and it does get to a level in my mind where it's one more data point of why the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in American government it is currently reposed in the figure of Elon Musk, who is a guy of towering cruelty and horrendousness.
Yeah, and also, you know, Vivian's on the fucking cover of teen Vogue and she fucking rules and she's killing it.
And by the way, that article, Vivian's witty and together, I mean, this is not a dead child.
Oh, she's great.
This is someone who is clever and smart and it's going to make a place in society.
The reality is just this guy's a fucking asshole and he should leave his kid alone. And he just yes, she's awesome and she's very smart, and it's horrible that she has to live through a father who is so profoundly shitty.
He is in the actual sense of the word monstrous.
Yeah, and He deserves our iron for any number of things, but one of them is how terrible he is to his daughter.
Normally we make some sort of witty thing about the whole bow and a fuckery, not this one. He's just a bastard.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.