Rick Wilson & Tim Weiner

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 Trump says the US should retake the Panama Canal if they do not lower.

The transit fees.

It's nice to see him trying to build consensus. We have such a great show for you today, the Lincoln Projects. Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Donald Trump getting his own Donald Trump and.

Whatever that means.

Then we'll talk to author Tim Wiener about what a weaponized FBI could look like.

But first the news Somali.

This is one of those nightmare things that I don't think every American thinks about. But I read a tool Gawandhi's book on the World Health Organization years ago, the Checklist Manifesto, and realized how important it is. They really lower death, they really help us have a better world. And yean day one, their Trump administration is going to pull out of.

Who yeah, the World Health Organization. Look, they're going to do all this stuff again. And by the way, the last Trump administration and I don't think Trump could have I think perhaps some of the things he could have done would have lessened the death toll. But I'm not sure that he would that any president would have been

But RFK Junior and.

The rest of the crew have decided that no, thank you. Donald Trump's transition team is pushing to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization on the first day of the new administration, according to experts who warn of the catastrophic impact it will have on global health. Members of the Trump team told experts of their intention to announce a withdrawal. I mean, by the way, this is like Trump World, right, They're going to get out.

That are small.

By the way, a lot of these things are like a rounding error. It's not millions and zillions of dollars, but it is, for whatever reason, something that Trump wants to cut. And we're going to see more of that, where they cut things that are absolutely not at all not worth doing, but and the returns on it are going to be. It's just very stupid. So I don't think anyone could be surprised by this.

Yeah, Trump, the Heritage Foundation, whoever it may be. So In other not fun news, it seems people are getting a little more urgency about getting rid of money in our politics and super PACs because they're realizing with the richest men on earth now threatening the primary everyone via tweet all the time, that things are not good.

I think this is a case of something that happened too little, too late, right, I mean, the idea that now is the moment for super path to be banned, when in fact we have a whole crew of very rich people trying to influence elections. And this has been going on for some time, right, Like the right is obsessed with George Soros and the Koch Brothers have been doing this forever. But Elon is much more blatant, He's much more right.

Even.

I think Elon seems much more passionate in a way that even the Koch brothers perhaps were able to hide their zeal a little better.

One could argue Elon's expressing his passion with action, whereas the Koch brothers they were just spending enough to keep their taxt.

Yeah, but they did a lot of bad stuff, like right to work stuff.

Absolutely.

But what I would say is, I do think all of these ambitions are worthy. But the problem with with any legislation like this is the Supreme Court is completely in the tank for rich people. So good luck trying to create legislation that would in any possible way try to tamp down on the oligarchy. Because remember, you have a six to three court, and six of those guys are real, you know, I mean two of them are like on and off Carlan Crowe's private jet every day.

Well he was mad that they did get reported.

Democrats did an ethics investigation and found that he lied about even getting even more stuff than he got from Harlan Crow. So it's hard for me to imagine the Supreme Court is going to do anything to stop billionaires from just doing whatever they want.

Yeh, well, I find that disturbing. I remember that's in the first Trump administration. Jared and I Vanka were disturbed by a lot of things.

Yes, the moral compass of Trump World, which says a lot about all parties.

Yeah, so Molly I have news though, she'll be being disturbed from a distance this time in the next administration.

Yes.

For Avanka Trump's entire life, she worked for her father, She was on his television show, she was very tall. But now she said she's absolutely not coming back. Ivanka Trump is done with politics.

Quote. I love my father very much, which is good.

I guess this time around, I choose to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. Iami, I do not plan to be involved in politics, she said in a twenty twenty two social media post after her father announced his third run for presidency. Again, okay, maybe maybe not. I mean, I don't take anything these people say.

The bank.

We'll see yeah, so may I have to say this is the one good thing I've seen. I recently watched a video on how bad sports gambling addiction is. I am continually disturbed when I see how much some of my younger employees who don't work on this podcast are addicted to it. And Congress is weighing actually getting involved because it's that ugly.

I wait with baited breath for Congress to legislate, and they're very good at legislating things where I don't want to sound cynical here, okay, and someone who's sober since I was nineteen, I think of the many ways in which Congress could help with the treatment of addiction when it comes to drugs and alcohol, or even when it comes to the Internet. I mean, at every point Congress has had opportunities to legislate technology, and every point Congress

And these are the people.

Running our country now, so you know which unelected oligarch or the elected oligark. They're never going to be able to agree on anything. And it's too bad because the truth is, you know, gambling just like fent and all, just like alcohol, just like drugs, just like any of so many of these other things.

Really, you know, it's my one last consolation prize before we head.

Off into it.

You've ruined Live.

The holiday break. Last week on this very podcast, Rick Wilson laid out the big struggle between Trump World versus d Sanctimonius Fron de Santis World about who will be Marco Rubio's successor as an appointment temporarily in the Senate before Ron de Sanctimonius tries to jump into that seat. And we saw some big moves on this yesterday. What'd you see?

So the big moves are that Lara Trump. You will remember her as being married to Eric. You know, someone has to.

Be It's very easy to forget Eric.

Lara Trump has said she will not run for the seat of Marco Rubio. Now here's what is happening. Marco Rubio going to this Cannabi Secretary of State very likely. Ron DeSantis probably wants that Senate seat. There was a theory that if Pete Hegsets got knocked out of DoD that Sanctimonius would.

Be the pick.

Now I am not convinced that Sanctimonius will be the pick, nor am I convinced that heg Sets will get DoD, though it's certainly possible either way. The setup was that you do something for me and I do something for you.

But looks like that may not happen.

Though again, with everything in Trump world, none of this could happen or all of this could happen, and you really do look foolish when you try to read the tea leaves. Remember this is chaos theory. Everyone is just doing chaotic things at all times.

And on that note, we have a great show today, but from here on out we will be on vacation with some really really great interviews, and we both want to wish you some happy holidays.

We'll be back on January fourth. Rick well And is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome back to our pre vacation episode of Fast Politics with Brick Wilson.

Have a holly jolly Christmas, Molly junk fast.

That's right, that radio voice we know and love.

The government did not get shut down, but perhaps this is an indication of things to come and what the Elon Musk presidency is going to look like.

Discuss it didn't get shut down, but only because Democrats saved Mike Johnson's weird skinny ass again again. I think what we have here is a preview of an endless stream of crises, one after another after another after another, that we are going to watch unfold in the first opening acts of the Trump administration. And then it's going to get really bad.

Yeah.

So I'm not the person who cooked up this is a Josh Marshall. But Josh Marshall had a really good point, which is that Donald Trump now has a Trump.

That's a great construction, it really is. That's a great way of thinking about it, is that Trump now has a Trump. He has somebody who is a chaotic disruptor, who does not care about any other social or political or personal pressure or persuasion, as they say, and so he will end up doing the maximum amount of chaotic damage he can all the time. Because that's fun for him.

My favorite part about Trump's Trump is.

That Trump actually now knows more about the federal government and how it works than Elon does discuss.

Look, I mean, Donald Trump is arguably one of the dumbest motherfuckers to walk on two legs on the planet Earth. But he has now been exposed to certain things and concepts that an ordinary president would be exposed to as they entered into, you know, discussions about government programs and services. Elon thinks that this is all just like the rest of his life, play money and absurd obeisance by people who work for him or when we invest with him, or or who make money off of him. That's not

In my view, Elon has this theory. I'm not entirely sure if it's his theory. So many of the things that Elon preaches are these theories that are sort of long term Silicon Valley theories. So, for example, we are the media. Now that's a Mark Andreas and that's a meniscus mollbug.

You can call him by his real name is Otis Jarvin.

But you know, these are tropes that Silicon Valley has on trafficked in sure, and they're not new to Elon. So trying to replace the media with a bunch of far right guys, you know, with Jack Pisobiac is not new.

All these people, Molly, and this I think is something really important to recognize as we go forward. All these people have a deep seated insecurity about who they are as humans. They are not confident in their actual ideas, and so they've lived in this bubble in Silicon Valley where they'll find something that pokes their little meme bubble in some way and they're like, oh, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen, and they adopt it as

Well, or he didn't transmit it. I mean, who knows what he was If he had.

That belief, he didn't admit it, but there was very little reason to believe that was what he believed. Okay, now we are in a much different era now, and it feels an awful lot like Elon Musk does believe that shit, and it feels an awful lot like he's embraced it. But these guys, they themselves up in this pseudo intellectual Silicon Valley, can't and these dorm room philosophy bullshit session ideas, and you're just like, grow the f up,

So one of the things that I think is really interesting is that now Elon has sort of decided he's going to play a government and he knows even less about government than Donald Trump, which in itself, again I'm not against the theory of disruption, like I think there's certainly something to be said for the theory of the case.

This entire time CR.

Right, because he can't legislate his way out of a bucking paper bag. So there's a huge, fatty CR filled with stuff everything from moving the stadium right, this is not what a CR supposed to look like at all, to just a lot of shit in there and a pay raise for members of Congress. And Elon gets furious because he doesn't want the government spending any money on anything. Irony abounds because Elon got rich on what government subsidies for clean tech, right, but he doesn't want that government

Involved in agrees.

Then Trump says, and also we should raise the debt ceiling government money, but also yeah, and then that gets the very few people who still have beliefs in the on the right, which happens to be people like Chip Roy, nobody's favorite but very much against government spending to engage. Trump then wants to primary chip Roy. I mean, bring it on the worst person you know could be. Right.

Here's the thing, and I think this is important to remember. Say what you will about Chip Roy at least and.

I will, yes, exactly, I mean that's right.

No, Chip Roy has more real beliefs than Nancy Mays.

Oh sure, I've seen enough of Nancy May's midlife crisis now. Honestly, I mean it's really tiresome.

But also Nancy mayce, you know, she believes this. She believes that, she believes whatever, whereas Chip Roy is like, we are here to cut the government. We will not raise the deadly limit, even if our you know, God King, our Orange God King tells us too.

It was real disarray.

There was a lot of talk of primary every Republican member.

Oh yes, well, look that that idea that you're going to primary anybody who opposes Elon at any time. I would like to remind people of, you know, one of the most fundamental pieces of creative literary merit of our era, and that is the Trump poem The Snake.

Oh yes, I know it, well, the snake is Elon? Still tell you?

Do you not understand it yet? You people? It's fucking Elon?

Does you still tell this?

You got you gotta tell the snake story?

Okay. Trump does this piece of poetry at his rallies, and he loves doing this. He loves it so much. And folks, I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's just like, no, but Trump loves this piece of poetry. And it's from like a sort of a song in the nineteen thirties or something. Anyway, long story short, it's about a woman who takes in a snake and the snake is pretty and it says, oh, take me in, dear woman, and blah blah blah. Well she takes it in.

And let us pause for a minute.

You know what, sixty percent of the satellite enormous government contracts top secret clearance. I mean, he runs the government as much as anyone who is completely on elected.

And you know what, Elon Musk is an unelected bureaucrat now and this is what he's doing. It is bureaucracy. He's playing with nothing about the future for for the Republicans is easy because he has now this capricious nature. He's always going to want control over everything. He's always going to want to have his way on all these matters. And when they say, yeah, Elon, that's really tough for us to do because of X or Y, you know,

Yes, I have just read about this theory. This is something I want to talk about before.

This theory of non playable characters that are characters. You know, they're ancillary, they are objects, they're not people.

They're background characters in games. Yes, I know. I'm very familiar with it.

Yeah, and there's a sense in which, you know, Elon sort of treats the people of the United States.

Like that, right, they're not they have no impetus.

Well, going back to that Silicon Valley culture, there are a lot of people in Silicon Valley now who really believe that they are a separate species of human being. This is why people like Curtis Jarvin and some of these Dark Web idiots are arguing that the time for a republic, and at the time for a democratically elected government is passed and we need to just bow down to a new monarchy of our tech overlords.

Right, oligarchy is sort of the play. Here we are in this sort of eline world. What I think is interesting is he then was saying, well, this now, this new CR is much lighter than the original legislation. The idea that somehow legislation should not be long is pretty stupid. And you know, there were a lot of things in that CR. It got very fatty, but there were a lot of things in there that were actually important, and

You'd be shocked to hear. So he undid a lot of work.

But what I wanted to bring up was this guy is the polling on him is still He's not that popular. He's making Trump crazy. He's in ma a Lago, He's making Johnson crazy. Like do you think this unlikely friendship? How long does the first body last?

This romance is doomed at some point, it's doomed because you know, Trump is always there's not even like premas Enter Parees. Trump has to be the main character in the drama. He has to be the one person that's out there where everyone's paying attention to him. He has to be the radical center of a major and constant drama. And that's fine. You know, there's a part of that that is explicable in how we understand Trump. We get that, we get we get Trump as we get who Trump is. Okay,

You know, all of this chatter about trump World versus the mainstream media. I was thinking about it today because I was on a panel talking about it, and I'm thinking myself, like the biggest leads in the entire world.

Donald Tnald J.

Trump, Right, So I'm thinking, you know, if you want to shut down the mainstream media, instead of suing them, you could just stop leaking to them.

These people leak well. And I always say this is one of my political rules that will someday go down in a book about my political rules. There are two kinds of leaks, administrations and organizations that work well leaked deliberately for a purpose. The ones that work badly leak chaotically, and they leak just because they leak. Donald Trump leaks constantly because he's a terrible manager.

Well and also because everyone's trying to settle the score in the mainstream media.

Yeah. Well, and look, let's also be realistic. Our friends of the mainstream media right now have a great difficulty in processing the fact that they don't work for Donald Trump, and a lot of them are scrambling in the wake of the ABC decision all these things. But you know, Trump is Trump's actually quite happy with the media right now. He's pretty delighted with the mainstream media right now. He likes where their behavior is at. He's even bragging about

Right.

No, I know I saw that quid, But you know, I do think there is his complaints about media and his administration's ability to think that they can use media to get rid of each one.

And you know, we see this all the time. I mean, part of why.

It was so easy to write about Trump World was because you would have you know, somebody would be in there doing something and then all of a sudden we get pieces. You know, Corey's out, Corey is having an a you know this kind of thing, right.

Oh yeah, Look, the endless revenge battles inside that world where a feature of the kind of behavior Trump encourages in his people. He loves for them to fight with each other. He loves for them to be mad at each other. That's that's a delight for him.

And it's proof of Fieldy, right.

Absolutely, they're always He's always looking to make sure somebody's kissing his ass properly. He's always looking to make sure that somebody's gonna bend the knee publicly to him once again. And that's why a lot of these people come and go into Trump world. You know, Steve Bannon was the rogue genius in the beginning of twenty sixteen. Then he got thrown out of the White House by the beginning of twenty eighteen. You know, then he was scabby Steve.

Tim Wiener is a New York Times correspondent and winner of the Poolhit Serprise and the National Book Award. He is the author of the Legis of Ashes and Enemies. His new book, The Mission the CIA in the twenty first Century.

Will be out in June. Welcome to Fast Politics him.

Thank you so much.

You've written two books on the FBI. Yeah.

Well, I've written one book on the NBI book and history of the CIA, called Legacy of Ashes, right, and there was plenty of FBI and CIA in book.

I wrote about my favorite president, Richard Nixon.

First, the Trump Nixon parallels seem really so striking. Explain to us sort of the parallels between the two.

Well, Trump is Nixon minus fifty points of IQ. He is an inveterate liar, he is secretive and conspiratorial. But Richard Nixon, bless his heart, had been vice president for eight years and a senator and congressman before that and had a fair amount of respect for the institutions of national security like the CI and the FBI, until he didn't. And the moment of truth with Nixon and the FBI

Years, right, it's a very long time.

And he basically said, I want you to spy more on Americans. I want you to subvert through espionage and sabotage the institutions of the left. I want you to step up wire tapping, bugging, burglaries, black bag jobs, and I want you to crush the left, and for the first time in his life, Hooper said, no, he didn't want to sign a document. He didn't want to put his name to this plan because he was convinced that the FBI would get caught and that his great rule

Do you think this is a factocomplete? What do you think senators could do? I mean, it seems like Patel would be hoover ask I mean, do you think that I'm being hyperbolic? What do you think?

Well again, Jay Edgar Hoover minus fifty IQ points. Under Hoover, the FBI took aim at the enemy within and on orders from President Eisenhower, Kennedy Johnson, Nixon and their attorney general, he conducted wardless wire taps, black bag jobs, political harassment of everybody, from Martin Luther King to the anti war movement,

It strikes me that Pete Hegseth is not the same as Cash Battel. Well, Pete Hegseth may have problems, and he may very likely. Again, I don't want to diagnose anyone, but he's clearly got a lot of real problems. Cash Battell has a sort of plan that strikes me as and the FBI is used against Americans when.

It is at its worst. I mean, isn't that sort of what's happening here?

You know, you have to take Trump's and his people at their word. Patel published last year in his book Government Gangsters, the people he wanted to see investigated and indicted his enemies list, and that list includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Quinton, John Brennan, former director of the CIA, Merrick Garland, Bob Muller, General Mark Melly, and Chris Right Right. The FBI does not have a charter limiting its legal powers. The FBI does with the Attorney General and the President

Yeah, I know what I know.

Oh and my grandfather's jailed by the FBI, Herbert.

Yeah, yeah, Well your grandfather was persecuted for his writings, Are I correct?

Actually he was persecuted because it was brought up by the House on American Activities for his refusal to name the people who he was involved with in a fundraiser for post Spanish Civil War orphans.

Was he a card carrying member of the Communist Party.

Yes, he was, but that wasn't why he was I mean, theoretically he was jailed that he was sent to jail on contempt of Congress, But he was targeted because he was a communist.

All right, So what is the favorite thing that House Republicans and some Senate Republicans liked to do. They like to hold hearings for clips on Fox News. They and Patel as a member of the incoming Fox News cabinet, will gin up political theater. At a minimum are they going to aren't arresting people for their political beliefs? Well, I mean, let's hope not. But that is what Trump and Patel have threatened to investigate, indict, and put in

Yeah, it's a real terrifying reality. So now, if you could just talk us through what Cash Patel has at his disposal, if he is able to become head of the FBI, if.

Cash Bateel is confirmed by the Senate, and if am Bundy is confirmed as the Attorney General, they have at their disposal thirty five thousand FBI agents and federal prosecutors appointed by Trump because all the federal prosecutors in every jurisdiction have to resign when the government changes hands to go after their enemies to investigate. First of all, if you are targeted by an FBI investigation, even if you have done nothing wrong, you are in a world of pain.

Well, that was what happened to my grandfather and his people.

Sure, and that's just the beginning. If they are indeed helping on proving Trump's quaint that the President of the United States, Barack Obama and as Vice President Joe Biden, and the directors of the CIA and the FBI under Obama illegally spied on him, which is, in Trump's words, treason, they can not only rip apart those people's lives, but they can rip apart the CIA and the FBI. You know, the CIA is my wheelhouse. I have written a book about the FBI. But people are going to be confronted

Right, that's the Seal Team six scenario. Right, Could a president and hire Seal Team six to kill his political enemies?

Yeah?

But if this president should choose to declare a political rival guilty of treason and deploy a paramilitary group on the CIA, from the FBI, from Seal Teams to assassinate that rival, and direct the Attorney General to sign a document saying this is cool, that death was necessary for the securing of liberty. That would be an official act for which the president is immut from presidentship. That's just the fact.

So, I mean, do we think there's a moment when the Supreme Court, and again, I mean, I guess there's no way to know what the Supreme Court will go along with, right, because we've seen them go along with quite a lot of staff.

You know, you and me and everybody else we know and all your listeners have been thinking all along, Well, the courts will think they will not. Oh, the law will state it will not. Okay, not now. And all of this flows from the conspiratorial belief of Troupe and Cash but Tel and the rest of the MAGA crowd that there is a deep state. The deep state is conspiracy of unelected soldiers and spies and diplomats and government officials who are secretly pulling the strings of the United

That I think is the ultimate goal, but it is just so scary.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tim.

You are more than well.

No, no moment, Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast.

Who is your moment of fuckery?

You know? My moment of fuckery this week is the story of the Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger down in Texas. And I want to say this first off, folks, I'm not being facetious when I talk about this, but Kay Granger has been in a memory care facility for some time now, since July. Now, that is not in and of itself something that is that is unexpected in America. Many millions of Americans have as they grow older, they have memory issues, they have Alzheimer's, they have they have

The only thing I.

Would say, I would just add is that Kay Granger is not the only one who's doing stuff like this, and Republicans do not have a lock on this, because I know for sure that there are Democrats who nobody has seen in the House. So the world that is creating this is a big fucking problem. And it's a really good case for term limits. It's a really good case for not being allowed to miss votes. It's a really good case for this is not how any of this should work.

That's it. Fuck them, Yeah.

Mollie, you and I both have older parents, and this is a real thing. It's a sad thing that this is something that has been for political advantage in a tightly divided House of representatives. They've been keeping this ghost in the situation that she's in. And I find it. I think it's a moral Honestly, I really do. I find it. I think it's a moral.

Yeah, it's really bad, but it's happening on both sides, and there should be term limits and members should not be allowed to trade stocks.

Look honest to God. If Elon muscle to clean up the processes in Congress, I could think of a dozen other ways than being a diletant dipshit trying to rewrite a cr You want to improve Congress, you want to make it work better, okay, Go for non partisan redistricting, you want to make it work better. Go for termal limits, you want to make it work better. Go for actual ethics reform. Those things would be I think great for

Thank you.

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.

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