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 Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Paskoff says Trump's foreign policy largely coincides with our vision. Really, I'm shocked. We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project z own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Elon Musk's actual motives for hanging around the Capitol constantly.
Owen, Molly, We're gonna have a special excerpt from our YouTube channel with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and he's going to tell us all about why Trump's economic moves are going to go very very badly form.
And we'll talk to Wisconsin Democrat Chair Ben Wickler about democratic messaging.
But first the news.
So, Molly, Elon is now saying we need to withdraw from not just NATO but the UN as well. I say, why the fuck should we care what he thinks?
Oh? No, well, look, I mean should we care? Absolutely? We should not care. But here's the thing, and I think this is pretty relevant and important. Donald Trump seems to mostly take many of his orders from Elon, So if we don't want obviously for the for America to leave NATO. It has been you know, especially because like NATO is paying more of their you know, the security money, I mean Trump's complaints, they're actually doing what Trump is
asking them to do. So for Trump to leave now would just mean that he just wants to which again, as we've seen, he's very mercurial and he behaves in a very often in a pretty unpredictable way. But it would not make any sense and it would not make any sense for them to leave the UN which is maybe why they would. And also I want to add, like at this point, after the Friday's Lens meeting, we've really seen a lot of anti American sentiment out of this White House.
So the idea that now they would leave.
This what is arguably the most successful treaty in modern history is pretty out there.
I hope they don't.
Again, this is like where we put someone in as president who behaves just about as badly as anyone we've ever seen in history.
Yeah, good stuff. So the one thing that is giving me a little hope in this week of extreme fuckery is Trump is getting a little bit of pushback from the normal sick Offhance's party, like Senator Jim Langford about the way he treated Zelenski.
There clearly are a few people in the Senate, and they are Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and James Langford who are willing to push back against Trump. Now, does that mean that all of Trum's cabinet nominees have sailed through. Yes, So they're not pushing back in the way that they should be pushing back, but they're pushing back a little bit. Again, we are taking whatever we can get because the bar is so low. These Republicans
are terrified of Trump. They are also wildly ineffective. The combination of the two has given Donald Trump basically a rubber stamp to do whatever the fuck he wants, so at least in this one moment, Langford said, I understand Zelensky is rightly concerned that Putin has violated every single agreement he's ever signed and can't be trusted again. That
is an important thing because it's the truth. And you'll remember that after that Oval Office meeting, we saw there's been a lot on the right of sort of like maybe Ukrainon started the war, maybe you know, like there's been a lot of like revisionist history, right, just like they sort of COVID lockdowns were worse than COVID in their mind. We're getting some of that here. So I would say, look, there is no reason to think that Donald Trump will not do the worst possible thing. But
let us hope that there will be some pushback. And this is so pathetic. I'm asking for the most pathetic things in the most pleading way. But please, if anyone has a conscience or a soul, this is not how any of this is supposed to work.
Yeah, I'll see, so speaking of the way things aren't supposed to work. So Elon Musk went on Joe Rogan again. This is not the occasion where he smoked a blunt live on Joe Rogan. This is a different occasion, and it happened on Friday night. He called social Security a classic mantra of forty years of Republican talking points, the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
Right, I mean, you pay into it and you get the money out. So technically it is not a Ponzi scheme. But Elon Musk has it absolutely in his crosshairs, and I think it's worth remembering that this is the richest man in the world. He desperately, desperately, desperately wants those tax cuts. He does not care how he gets them or what he cuts. Remember, he believes that the weather forecasting is too expensive. Right this is during a time of unprecedented wild weather and climate change.
He really is absolutely.
Just not thinking clearly and taking a chainsaw to the federal government. And also on stage, I have a late ad for the news cycle, which is the FDAs under the staunch leadership of one Robert F.
Kennedy Junior.
Oh can't wait to hear what he did.
So this week the FDA can from the cancelation of a meeting of the Vaccine Advisory Committee to select a strain for this year's flu vaccine to target. It's the second disruption to this committee since Rfk's confirmation. Health groups and experts raised concerns that the lack of transparency and question the motives behind the decision. I think it's worth realizing that there's a real possibility that RFK Junior is going to stand in the way of vaccine development.
Right now.
Measles which was eradicated but is now back because of the scourge of anti vacs is ripping through Texas. It's already killed one child. It's also in New Mexico. There is a real chance that there is besides the fact, you'll remember that Elon has cut these funding grants and then the federal judiciary said they had to put them back on, and they haven't really been put back on, so they've been lying about whether or not the money's
actually going to the recipients. So we have cancer research paused, we have universities in chaos, and then we have RFK Junior saying that he doesn't want to have this meeting or canceling twice now a meeting of the flu vaccine. Look, you and I are in our early fourties, well, mid forties, early forties. You and I are in our thirties, and we if we get the flu, it will be no big deal. But there are people have cancer, there are people who are elderly. There are people for whom getting
the flu could be the end of their lives. And the blood will be on the hands of Robert F. Kennedy Junior. And it will not be the first time that he has deprived people of life saving vaccines. Just look at what happened in American Samoa.
Yep, Smiley. One of the things I think gets us down regularly is that Trump will probably never be held accountable for much of his fuckery, and that is held an example of him taking the seized boxes back to Florida on Air Force one.
Yeah, Trump is taking those boxes back to Florida. Someday they'll be part of the Trump Presidential Library, which will be in a McDonald's. I actually think that the big problem with this sort of resistance to Trump is in one point zero was the idea that someone was going to hold him responsible.
Wealthy white man get away with it.
They always have, and I take no pleasure in reporting that they may always get away with that. This may be how it is in this country, and by the way, it's not new. This country has a long and storied history of white men getting away with unimaginable things. Look, no one is going to rescue us. Voters are going to rescue us, hopefully.
I like that.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson, Only.
John Fast Happy Sunday as we record this to you.
Happy Monday.
Monday as y'all and the listening audience listen to this.
That's right, you're driving to work and Rick and I are here to make sense of it all.
Richard's man in the world.
Bathrooms in public parks because he needs that tax cut.
Discuss Look all of this bs about wave, fraud, waste, and abuse Elon Musk from the federal tax cut that he will receive if the White if the if the House passes their tax bill. They claim they found about two hundred billion dollars worth of tax cut so far, and it's really like sixty or something less than that, probably even lower than that.
A lot of bitest stuff that was expired along, Yeah.
Exactly, contracts have already led all that stuff. Anyway, let's say they found two hundred billion dollars. Elon Musk will personally benefit by over two hundred billion dollars from the tax cut that they're about to pass. So if we're looking for fraud, waste, and abuse, maybe we shouldn't pass a tax cut for dickheads.
Yes, fraud, wasted abuse. So you're the richest man in the world. Okay, not a little, but by a lot. Okay, you have billions of dollars, You have multiple children by many, many.
Women, fourteen as of you have decided.
That the best use of your time is to sleep in the EEO B, which actually I think did we talk about the EOB that it's like a very beautiful, old but very dilapidated office BILB.
I would not call it dilapidated, but I would call it a product of the late nineteenth century. Yes, and it is very cramped. I have been assigned over there for projects a couple of times when I was working in government.
Drafty and called 's this way.
There were eight of us in a little microscopically sized bullpen office. If I would guestimate that office was like twelve feet wide and sixteen feet long, with eight of us working in there. As they said, assholes and elbows. One of them's touching the other at any given time.
Okay, well it doesn't matter. We don't know what he's doing there or how much he's there. But the point is he's large. He's often in Washington, DC with his crew of twenty something coders trying to figure out ways to cut fraud, waste and abuse or stuff.
He just doesn't like.
I just am surprised it didn't occur to him that this was like an incredibly bad look.
I think you just said something interesting that I think we probably all need to take a deep breath and think hard about. Whenever he says fraud, waste, and abuse, it is actually about his aesthetic or business preferences. He doesn't like anything he considers woke because of his trans daughter. He doesn't like anything that is regulatory towards any of
his massive corporate interests. With Musk being the biggest titty baby on the federal dole that has ever existed in history, he has received more money from the federal government from American taxpayers than any other individual person in history.
Yes, so let's just talk about it. This weekend.
What happened was on Friday we saw this Trump blow up where he and JD had a huge, I want to say embarrassing scene with the Zelensky Zelensky left. They didn't sign the minerals agreement. That is maybe over, maybe on hold. Then this weekend we saw more Republican town halls. We saw democratic town halls of voters freaking out. We saw protests at SpaceX and at Tesla in New York.
We saw one thousand people in Vermont. I didn't even know there were a thousand people in Vermont protesting jd Vance's skiing vacation.
Well, what we have here is a really I think indicative, long running signal that political markets give us. If you go back in nineteen ninety four, the town halls were a sign. In two thousand and six, the town halls were a sign in twenty and ten, the town halls were a sign in ninety four, and in ten they were a bad sign for Democrats. In two thousand and six and twenty eighteen they were bad signed for Republicans.
So the town halls are a good early signal. And when Republicans are running away from their own town halls, and I don't mean just like not doing them, I mean physically fleeing.
And stopping having them too.
Well, yeah, stopping having them is one thing, but physically running out of the room. As we saw with the Senator from Kansas yesterday, these guys understand and they know something's coming. They feel it in the wind. They know that the cuts now have cut into Maga country, the cuts now have cut deep into Red states.
More coming, right, I mean they want to cut eight hundred and eighty billion dollars from medicaid.
As we have reviewed a hundred times, there is one place where the money's at, and that money is in Medicaid, Medicare, social Security. You could cut all the discretionary spending you want, and you will not get to a two trillion dollar netcut, which is what they say they want, and servicing the debt, which you know, the social programs are what drove most debt anyway, So long story short.
All the tax cuts too.
I mean, well, that's what I'm getting to is these guys are now proposing in the short run, the Elon tax cut will cost four point nine trillion. With a T dollars, you could cut the government down to six guys working around a table in a Kinko's copy shop, and you will not have enough cuts to pay for the fact that this four point nine trillion dollar tax cut when it unfolds over four to five years after it's done, it costs US an additional five trillion dollars.
On top of it, We're not going to be able to service the goddamn debt. We're gonna have to go to a more expensive debt option. This thing is a flaming shit show. It's the fire Festival of tax bills. It's a shit show on the peak of burning Tire Mountain. There's nothing good about this thing.
Yes, it is pretty fascinating. So look, you and I were talking about this carvel op ad. I'm going to write a column about it in my Vanity Fair column.
I assume you've written about it.
Are will a little bit?
So?
Carville says the best thing Democrats can do is nothing. Now, clearly the Democratic leadership agrees with him, right, because we haven't seen them out there. But my hottest take is that this is a very optimistic assessment. What I feel like is so annoying about this take is that Carville is assuming we're going to have elections in two years.
I am not.
I would not make that assumption.
I mean, I think if we are out there fighting, we will have elections in two years. I think if we roll over and play dead, Donald Trump will say, you know, they're not that upset.
We can do whatever we want.
The reason that Trump one point, oh, was such a failure was because people pushed back at every point.
What happened in twenty seventeen and eighteen is that people went out every single day and beat the damn drum. We believe X, Trump believes Y. We will do a Trump believes B. And the things Trump believes and the things Trump will do will hurt you, we will help you. That is a simple construct. Look, I love James, but and my friend Evan Field's you know, he's like with respecting this is now's the time to shut the fuck up, bro, because fighting Trump it doesn't mean you have to swing
at every pitch. Okay, it doesn't mean you have to follow every rabbit hole. Like, look, how much have you actually seen me like complaining about the Gulf of America bullshit, it's bullshit. You'll see me complain a lot about Donald Trump and jd Vance doing a strip tease for Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office with that shameful horseshit from Friday.
You'll see me complain a lot about Elon Musk savagely going through without any comprehensive understanding or plan firing vital federal employees who do things like I don't know, deal with bird flu, I don't know, deal with radioactive waste or nuclear weapons.
Well, what about during the cabinet meeting when Elon was like, by the way, when I saw that, I thought, oh, this can't possibly be real, and he was like, the a Bola people, we accidentally fired them, but don't worry, we got them back.
Well, and of course it was a lie. Right, of course it was a fucking lie.
But even still, as soon as you say something like that, despite the fact that it was a lie, that is when you lose all credibility. And if a Democrat had said, we fired the a Bola people, but don't worry, we got them back, and actually it wasn't true.
Like the world would be on.
Fire right, Washington, DC would be an armed camp. There would be people with pitchforks and torches marching through the streets. The whole thing is such hot garbage. And again I know that at the Washington Post now we're focusing only on individual liberty and free markets.
Yeah, well, it's suspiciously like the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
So it'll be interesting to say.
And if you want a Wall Street Journal editorial page, there's a perfectly good one at the Wall Street Journal. But this idea that we're going to have a unconstrained lunatic hopped up on ketamine and adderall with a bunch of idiots.
Allegedly.
Okay, you know what he admits.
He admits he's on the k allegedly.
Okay, all right, Well, if we're going to have a guy who behaves as if he every morning gets up and does a booty bump of cocaine and then runs around the government with a flamethrower and a chainsaw, not cutting things that are necessarily wasteful, just randomly doing it for the purposes of terrorizing the federal workforce.
And he also cuts things he doesn't like. I think that's important. These aren't necessarily real cuts into just that things he doesn't agree with he considers to be fraudulent.
Right, So when he goes out and says, well, AI can forecast the weather better than the weather forecasters and fires, I think it was like two thirds of the folks that Noah are about to be shitcammed. What he fails to realize is that all that fucking data for the AI comes from really smart people at Noah. The cuts here agus like, we're saving so much money. We're all getting the five thousand dollars check. You are not.
Nobody's getting any checks.
Wrons you're not getting a five thousand dollars show.
You know, it's funny because I watch c SPAN because I have no life. Nobody's paying me for this, but if you want to send me another flea some here.
My fiance's favorite sweatshirt is se Span and chill.
Yeah.
So I was watching the hearing of the There's a person, an Army secretary who's sitting there for his hearing, and he's a mega mega donor, Trump megadonor who knows from Palm Beach.
You know, this is the cabinet.
This is the administration for the billionaires, by the billionaires, and the American economy is not working for a huge swath of the American people. And you have a government that is almost entirely made of very, very very wealthy people.
Well, they are very wealthy, and yet they are also a proof point that just being a billionaire doesn't make you smart, and just being a billionaire doesn't make you have any moral grounding, and the few people that aren't billionaires seem to be even worse.
Right, but it does make you very emboldened.
Oh yes, and let's be quite real about it. This. They do live in a different world Molly. They don't work for much every day, and they don't wait for much every day, and they believe that they're going to ride out anything that happens in our economy without responsibility or damage to themselves.
Right, we're seeing anecdotally and there was reporting too that there's you know, one hundred people in Staten Island, right, Staten Island.
Because a red burrow, very very red, it's.
Deeply red and they are out there protesting. So we are seeing this everywhere. So the question I think is like, when will democratic leadership engage with this?
And also why are they not doing it yet?
I have said this now probably forty eight different ways. But if they do not hold the line on the spending bill with with Johnson, they are funding Dose, they are funding Elon, They're funding Trump's bullshit, they are funding Trump's tax They're going to nudge up to being co conspirators if they take the bait from these these people. And I know and you know what's going on right now?
Okay, wait, what's going on now?
They're going behind the scenes to Hakeem Jeffries and say, well, your people need their funds for you, their districts, they need their programs and their projects for their districts, and we're going to make sure you're taken care of. And you know, we'll make sure Doz doesn't fuck you guys on this thing or that thing. If you'll just help us out this one time. Right, this is a trap. It is a trap. Do not follow in the trap. As they say in Ober, there were arthel do not seek the treasure.
But it's also a lie, right like what we saw. And I think this goes back to the Zelenski meeting on Friday. What Zelensky needed, was wanted was a security guarantee. What Trump would not give him was a security guarantee. Now, behind the scenes, all of the soothers and smoothers, including Lindsay Graham, were like, you just need to be and do whatever he wants and not worry about the security guarantee.
You can trust us. And here's the fundamental problem. If you are making a deal with Donald Trump, you really think you can trust him.
First off, let's be very clear about one thing. Donald Trump from the very beginning was going to screw Zelensky over. And it's not just because he loves the taste of Putin's taint. Donald Trump was gonna Scowzelensky because Zelensky in twenty eighteen would not help Rudy Giuliani's drug deal, as John Bolton called it, to make up a false dossier about Joe Biden. He was never going to forgive that.
Trump looks at that moment as where everything went off the rails for him and the impeachments and the criminal stuff. That's where Trump looks at the inflection point, and he blames Zolensky personally. So none of this in that meeting should have shocked anybody, I mean, except for the like over the top drama Queen jd Vance, you know, please Daddy, look at me, love me, SIMPI. But this was Trump having his petty vengeance. Yes, did Zelensky need a deal,
he did. Did Trump want to make Putin happy? He did. But the pettiness of it, to put the security of the world behind Donald Trump needing to be a little bitch is exactly what you saw on display there.
Yeah, I just don't totally understand what the point of that was, right, because it didn't get anyone anywhere they needed to be. It didn't help anyone.
The hard fact underneath all of this Molly is they don't care. Everyone in that room, with a couple of the idiot exceptions, knew what they were doing. The White House planned this, they knew the harm it would cause, America's reputation in the world, and they didn't care because that's what Trump wanted from them. They are not about America or their constitutional oath. They are about making that more unhappy.
See.
I actually think, and I love you, but I actually think you're wrong. People have been saying this that they planned it, but I don't think they planned it. I think everyone told Zelensky how to behave the same way that they told maccrone, the same way that they told kier how to behave. Right, they said, this is what you do. You go in there, you suck up to him.
I think Zelensky has always been very obstreperous, and remember we had reporting that he had been very tough with Biden too, right, he felt he could kind of boss Biden around.
So I just want to add that again.
I think what they did was appalling, But I'm just saying, like, I think Zelensky went in there and was like, I want a security guarantee and sort of thought he could get it. And then JD. Vance was like, I'll out Trump Trump and let's go. People want to at all times give Donald Trump more credit than he probably deserves.
I will say this, there was no scenario where Zelensky walked in that office and there's another reporting about the White House staff like this is going to be great. We've got in said they knew what was coming, they planned this.
But they wanted to sign this deal. I mean they thought they were making a deal.
You know what. I have a theory of the case on the deal that they don't give a fuck about the deal. The deal was an excuse for them to blow this up. Because if you want to go and get the same quantity of rare minerals, we'll go to make a deal in Chile or Ecuador or Argentina. It was a lot of stuff closer to home less problematic. This was always an excuse, not a reason.
In my view, certainly possible. Thank you, Rick Wilson every time.
I'll see you next week. Thanks.
Ben Wickler is the chairperson of the Wisconsin Democrats. Welcome back too Fast Politics.
Ben.
Thanks Milli, it's great to be back with you.
I'm so excited to have you here because I'm thinking a lot about the way in which Democrats engage with normal people. And you are in Wisconsin and you have had great success and then also a band cycle with interacting with normal people on the ground in Wisconsin.
So we first kind of get us up to speed.
What's Wisconsin like right now and what are you looking at.
Well, it's interesting because Wisconsin is the first state that actually has a state wide election in this new Trump era. Last fall, we had the highest turnout in the country, and that's because Republican turnout rose everywhere. Wisconsin was one of the few states where Democratic turnout went up also, and so we had more Democratic voters for Harris than we did for Biden in most counties, rural areas, suburbs, cities. We had more young people voted for Harris than for
Biden in Wisconsin. It's just that there's even more turnout on the Republican side. So there's a kind of a fever pitch of energy here. And now on April first, we have a state Supreme Court election, and we're getting our first taste of what politics is like in this new Trump era. And what we're seeing is on our side.
After a kind of period of grieving and somewhat like curling up pine fetal position among Democrats, people are back out knocking on doors in the snow, and on the Republican side, Elon Musk is now personally flooding the zone with millions of dollars of his money to like Brad Shimmel, who's the maga can it for State Supreme Court against Susan Crawford, who's the kind of like common sense, fair minded judge who's running for Supreme Court that we're supporting,
And it feels like a proxy for the national site, like are we going to have laws in this country or we're going to have judges who actually the out pay attention to what the constitution says? Will the public get to choose who our leaders are or will this basically a Trump Musk plutocracy or kleptocracy or whatever kind of autography if you want to call it.
So Mosk has donated a lot to the race and then also has a pack, right.
Yeah, he's doing it all through his own vehicle. So he has super called building America's future that I think is like two point six million so far at two million through America Pack.
I might have those reverse.
He added one of another million dollars in tv ads yesterday. At the moment we're recording this, and it doesn't seem like it's stopping. He tweeted about the race three times yesterday. Who is over two hundred and thirty million. I still call it Twitter Twitter followers. He's frenetically attacking social security and healthcare and trying to freeze cancer research and all
that stuff. At the same time, he has enough time to try to buy the judiciary by trying to install Brad Schimmel, the mega judge in Wisconsin.
One of the things about Trump was that he was not very focused on elections that weren't his, and he got people out for this twenty twenty four election in ways we hadn't seen, perhaps because they just were sort of these low frequency voters who maybe had never voted or weren't planning on voting, but voted for him.
Do you think Elon can get.
Those people out for a judge election.
Well, that's exactly the question. So Brad Schimmel is the former Republican attorney general in the state. He's been part of the kind of mega wing of politics for a while. He's very clear that his goal is not to persuade people. It's to turn out hardcore Republican voters, to turn out Trump supporters who might vote. And on our side, Susan Crawford the kind of judge the people across the political
spectrum used to vote for it. Now there's still some slice of kind of moderate Republicans who are horrified by especially by what they're seeing now with must just like defunding medical research and.
The NIH Fund, yeah.
And iah, Yeah, huge cuts to universities in Wisconsin that like, so many people here are directly affected by this. We just got a breaking newslayer today that the VA had laid off disabled veterans who were working on buying veterans benefits in Wisconsin. That's happening in real time today. And so that guy coming in and buying the State Supreme
Court that repels people too. And on our side, like we have to just make sure that anyone who doesn't like what they're seeing from DC turns out and votes for Susan Crawford to make sure that the State Supreme Court doesn't become a rubber stamp for this kind of internal coup that's operating nationally. The other big fight on this is and this is sort of feeded from the national spotlight, but we had an abortion ban here for four hundred and fifty one days. It was written in
eighteen forty nine, before modern medicine. Brad Schimmel like talked about how there's nothing wrong with that law and there's no constitutional right to abortion in our state. This is something that's going to be decided by the state Supreme Court. There was actually a case when Red Shimbal was Attorney general. He went after Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood hired as its lawyer Susan Crawford. There's a case in Wisconsin called
the Plan Parentood versus Brad Shimmel. And that question also one of the big defining questions in this in the Supreme Court race, which is will people vote for freedom in this moment as they did in twenty twenty three. And if you look at the Republican ads, they're just driving fear. It's like fear of crime, crime, crime, crime, fear for fear. And Jimble doesn't have a great record on that either, but his but that's the that's the card.
That's yes, what does it look like on the ground when you talk to people, I mean Trump is sort of starting to dip in the polls. Elon is very unpopular polling wise. But is there a disconnect, Like Elon is doing these ads against this Wisconsin judge. Do people understand that it's Elon? Is it a proxy battle for Elon popularity or is it proxy battle for Trump popul.
What is it?
So it's starting to become a proxy for muss Trump popularity. Elon's ads don't mention Elon smartly Smartly, Yeah, It is essentially our job to make sure that people know that Musk actually has a lawsuit in Wisconsin courts around Tesla, so he also is trying to get as always his
own bag. But so often when you're like talking to people, they're just starting to tune into the fact there is an election Aprile first, these typically have much lower turnout than November elections, and they're seeing all these ads and then explaining that this is Musk who is trying to buy the Supreme Court to remove an each check on his power. That is highly motivating to a ton of people.
And so that's we have this for this month. We have this opportunity with our thousands of volunteers knocking on doors with you know, all the kinds of communication we can do to kind of democrats and moderates and people who just care about the American experiment and systim of
government like that's that is a super motivating message. There are also some mega super fans of Musk, like no question, and then there's a kind of broader electorate that is generally dismayed about what's happening, but it's trying to make that of it all and different messages are probably going to move different people. But it's possible, I think over this month that this becomes a kind of referendum on what Musk and Trump are doing in a way that
affects the national conversation. Because if given that we're being outspent now by Musk and Trump, like if we can defeat them in this moment, and I think the polls are getting more back soon that this is like a pretty tight race. If we defeat them, then that shows
that Musk is not politically vulnerable. If we defeat Musk and Trump and bad shimmele in this moment, If Susan Crawford gets the tie breaking vote on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, that shows that operation Musk is not politically and vulnerable, that there's actual price to be paid for this.
And what we need most of all nationally now is for Democrats to feel the boldness to fight back and for Republicans to realize that they're tying themselves to a sinking ship if they if they back everything Musk is doing, Republicans to fear general election political consequences instead of just
primary challenges funded by Musk from their right. My goal is that we support Susan Crawford to win an election for democracy and freedom and fairness and justice, and also shatter this idea that Musk is operating with total political impunity and put some energy into the much broader public that doesn't want to feel in us stopping their Social Security payments and firing the people who administer veterans benefits.
Do you see on the ground, I mean, like what they're doing. It's five weeks into this shit show and already you know, they've slashed the federal government.
They're talking about doing more. You know, you're seeing veterans.
Laid off, Like do you see people like this story in the Washington Post about the woman who did it voted for Trump because she thought he was going to give her free IVF and then she got fired.
I mean, are you seeing that kind of thing in Wisconsin or not yet?
It's starting to spread pretty rapidly, fascinatingly week by week. This reminds me of this time in twenty twenty when the COVID pandemic had started. People paying a lot of attention were like hair and fire about it. The general public hadn't woken up, and then it started affecting more and more daily life to let up endit everything. And right now it feels like it's starting to reach that kind of proportion. It's a shockwave that hits different places
at different moments. I can see the kind of energy on the ground is explosive. We're having more volunteers showing up for our door knocking than we did in twenty twenty three, which was a record breaking year for us. Right now, as we're recording this, my mom is at a protest at a Tesla supercharging station a couple of miles from here, with signs about Musk and Brad Shimmel
and saying about for Susan Crawford that she made. There is a real sense, I think among Democrats across the country and people disaffected from the GOP that we're in an emergency moment and we have to figure out what to do. And the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin gives people a thing to do in a way that we're starting to see really bubble up. And this is not at all a slam dunk, like this is not a sure thing race. We're facing just a wall of the
right wing machine. So this is kind of all hands on deck moment here.
I was talking to a senator yesterday who was saying that he had had this call in town hall and they had had thirty six thousand people and their state barely has thirty six thousand people, like that's something like five percent of the state. And I said, what do you know? Are they angry are there? And he said, the overwhelming feeling they have is fear.
Yeah, I believe that there's a real fear that the things that people have counted on, that their planes will land safely, that their food will be inspected, that they'll be able to get medicine if they're sick, that these things, the pillars that undergird this the basics of life, are being kicked out from under them by the richest people in the world for their own benefit, and no one
knows how far this is going to go. There are rumors flying that Musk and Trump have a plan, and I think it's worth saying that the Republican Party has a plan because this is all Musk executing that have the total support of the entire Respublican Senate. Caucust is not just one dude.
This was their wish lists.
They're planning to fire half of the people who work for the Social Security Administration. It's like a hundred twenty thousand people, and we'd go to Social Security offices to work out problems with their benefits. If nobody's there when they show up, like people are going to die.
That's the point.
That's it. It comes back to people's lives. This chainsaw is not being applied to acronym agencies that do nothing. It's being applied to people's lives, to people. Nobody voted
for this, nobody asking for this. This is a fringe extreme, you know, neo tech, monarchist like nightmare that's being imposed on the country without the country's consent, and a way to fight back that actually says something does something, It means something is something people are grief for because the antidote of fear is to realize that you actually have power, and this fight is a place where people have power.
In twenty sixteen, what happened was that every election after twenty sixteen that was a low turnout election quote unquote, even though they had higher turnout than historically they might have, every single one, you know, Republicans just got shell act right, every special every you know, because they were just so you know, informed, voters were furious and even like you look at that polling right that Biden voters, you know, he did much better among people who read newspapers, right,
I mean, like, so, are you worried that Elon's money has closed the gap? I mean that it's not going to be the same, or do you still think hope that there could be?
I think there is hope here. There really is hope.
And the reason is exactly what you're saying, that that people who are paying attention, who are the people who generally vote in Supreme Court races, see what's being done to them, to families across the state. They see that the world's richest man is trying to defeat Susan Crawford so he can have his personal bagman cast the deciding vote in Wisconsin's Apreme Court. And for people that are paying attention, there's there's a sense of urgency about voting.
And the question mark is whether, if you're listening right now, can you volunteer for enough shifts, if you're in Wisconsin and you bring enough friends to the polls to outrace the impact of Elon Musk's millions. And I think there's reason to believe the answer is yes. This is I think a race that is within our power to win. But I think what I want to say, with a big blinking set of red lights around it, is we should not expect the kind of landslide that we had
in twenty twenty three. We won that by eleven percentage points. Don't think that this will take care of itself because of asymmetric inversion and engagement exactly like, think of this as a job to be done. This is work that we have to do to make sure that that every friend and neighbor are that every kid who's away for college, that they all know that this is a must vote election and that they act accordingly.
So I was in DC for a day and a half I made it back hoof and the big dinner party conversation in DC is what should democrats be doing? I think of you as like your ability to or rate has elevated you. I'm sorry to tell you, so what should it takes? I take no pleasure in saying this to you because I know how. But what is the message that Democrats should be doing? And are they doing.
A good enough job? And what would you like to see them do? If not?
So, when democrats are communicating, they're often doing a good job.
To me, the volume of communication needs to go up as high as we can crank it because right now the other side that Trump and Musk are narrating this moment and they want to make this about the ravel rising, you know, pirates trying to mess up the deep state, as opposed to the reality that this is the richest people in the world, far right extremists who are attacking working people across the country, no matter you know what they look like, or where they live, or who they
voted for. If you're somebody who doesn't have billions of dollars that are going to multiply if you get a giant tax cut, they're stealing from you. To benefit themselves, and these attacks on the on the government do nothing to help.
This is this is a rich taking from the poor.
Rich taking from the middle class, from the poor, even from you know, if you're a small business owner and suddenly the small business administration is gutted, like, this is not good for you either. This is a tiny group of people at the expense of everybody else, and they're breaking every rule and every law to be able to do it. But the key thing is to communicate about the impact on people's lives and to make the people
who are affected the heroes. Make the people who just want to keep the forest from burning down, or the people who want to make sure plans land safely, or that we get the next cancer research breakthrough, or just people who get Social Security texture who rely on Medicaid because your kids have disabilities. In Wisconsin, thirty percent of rural kids are born covered by Medicaid, you know, any of the things Republicans try to paint it as this
is a broad bust attack on just about everyone. So to me, the job one is to put the affected people, regular folks across this country, working people front and center in the communication tie back what they're doing constantly to who it hurts and what their motive is, which is to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, and do that through massive on every platform and channel and
every state volume of communication. The kinds of town halls that Democrats are doing to their great credit, that are getting attacked by people, and the act that is showing up Republicans downhalls, that's exactly the right move. The second thing I think for all of us is to lift up people that are doing this well. So when when Democrats are communicating really effectively, let's make it go viral.
When people are fighting back against the GOP, exposing something the Republicans are doing, when they're championing laws that can actually help to protect people. When you have Susan Crawford who's standing up like a David against this goliath of beingland Musk, let's make sure that they become heroes in the eyes of the public, that people find out about what they're doing. To be able to get the hope that comes for knowing that there actually are people fighting back.
I think often we can slip into just being frustrated that we're not saying things we want to happen. But the most powerful force in behavior modification is positive reinforcement. You want to make it great for people to do the right thing and great things. And there are Democrats doing great stuff. Let's lift them up. And then the third thing is to win elections. It's to channel all this energy and fury and rage and fear that people
have into elections where they're volunteering, they're donating. By the way, wisdoms dot organ slash volunteer with them that org slash donate or Crawford for wi dot dot com. I can chip in to help Susan Crawford by actually getting involved in elections and winning. We show that Republicans have made themselves politically toxic, and I think politicians pay attention to what happens in actual electoral outcomes even more than than
polls or campaign contributions. A lot of people, a lot of Republicans right now, are just trying to figure out where the wind is blowing. And there are people who's incentive is to convince them that their biggest political risk for them is to not follow along with everything Musk
and Trump try to do. They need to see vividly in electoral results that their jobs, their political careers are on the line, and that this will very quickly become a career ending mistake to just go along with this assault on the foundations of American democracy and freedom in the middle class. And if we can send that message electorally,
that creates the conditions for Democrats to sweep in. There's thirty four governor's races in twenty twenty six, you know, to this November, there's chances to flip legislative chambers across
the country. There's the House majority. If we have a twenty ten like cycle, we win the Senate majority in twenty twenty six as well twenty ten in reverse, and like with Republicans start realizing that they're sowing the wind and about to reap the whirlwind, then they might start cracking and actually, you know, back pedaling on the constant support. And if they don't, they're going to lose their jobs
very soon. We need to accelerate that process, and to do it, races like Wisconsin Supreme Court race and New York's twenty six US House special election in Florida's first and six congrationial district special elections give us a chance to paint a giant warning sign on the canvas of American politics.
Thank you so much, Ben, Thank.
You Ben, Thanks to your listeners for helping with Susan Crawford.
And now we have a special excerpt from our YouTube channel. It's a fantastic interview Molly did with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. If you want to hear the whole thing, please head to our brand new YouTube channel, where we're dropping three videos every single week of interviews that you won't hear on Fast Politics.
Well, hello, Ollie's awfully gotten nice to do this again, and also good to see you.
It's good to see you and very you know, just delighted. So let's talk a little bit about where we are sort of. You know, this is like an incredible, strange, transformative moment for labor. Can we talk about this?
Yes, well, it's it's strange and transformative for everything, but absolutely for American workers, for labor. It is particularly weird because here the president, who remember, was elected partly because he was going to be the voice, you know, your voice, the voice of working people who have been they've been shafted over the last it's not just the last ten years,
twenty years, it's really forty years. I mean, the median wage in America of the typical worker, particularly the worker without a college degree, and that's you know, that's sixty percent of the workforce has barely moved adjusted for inflation. So, you know, you've got a lot of people out there who are justifiably frustrated, angry, feel like they've been working hard, haven't been you know, haven't been doing as well as
they thought they should be doing. And we're promised to be doing the kind of you know, the social contract of America is basically that if you played by the rules and you work hard, you're supposed to be doing better and better as the economy does better. But these people have not. And Donald Trump said he would do great things for them, man, as he promised in Trump you know number one one, Yeah, point zero. Well, he didn't do much for them then, and he's doing even less for them now.
You know, it's funny because I was listening to that hearing for Lori Chaves Dreamer.
She's up for appointment.
As maybe the Labor Secretary. Does that send right to you?
Yeah, no, she is, And then Republicans are not completely sure she is with them because she actually was a backer of the pro Act, the act that gives labor unions and workers more power to form unions.
And the pro Act I want you to talk about because it's like there's been so much, so much of this sort of undergirth of a lot of trump Ism two point zero is this sort of federalist society Project twenty twenty five kind of ideological framework that a lot of it is has been funded by the Koch brothers, right, this sort of anti you know, right to work laws, so you know, and of course right to work laws are anti union laws.
So talk to me.
About kind of where Republicans find themselves because Trump one a plurality of the kind of voters who usually go with Democrats, and those voters were promised that they would be you know, that he would help them, and all of this sort of ideological work that has gone into Trump two point zero is to crush them.
Make it make sense, Molly, There's no question about it. I mean, and Democrats have not been screaming from the top of the rafters, from from every rooftop that in fact, the Trump administration, the Trump regime is not a pro worker, it's not pro labor. The people who are at the top of the Trump regime. I'm going to use the word regime rather than an administration. You know, they have a long history of being anti worker, anti labor. I mean, look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk is one of the
most anti labor CEOs in America. He has crushed people, He's fired people illegally who have wanted to form unions. He's done it again and again. He's got twenty two labor charges against him pending in the National Labor Relations Board right now. And the board can't do anything about it because why because the chairman of the board was fired by truck and that means that the board is
basically defanged. It can't work. But you have other people in the administration, in the regime who are also very anti worker, very anti labor. What they have done and what they had, the Koch brothers and I mean all of the people, the billionaires who have been supporting Trump. The way they've made so much money. One way is to suppress wages, to push wages down, to basically threaten workers that if they are trying to form a union or trying to get better wages, they're going to be fired.
One of the things that I think a lot about when I think about the Biden administration, which I feel like people voters didn't understand because they were not spoken to about it at all. In fact, Biden world kind of hit it. But it's why so many rich people were so angry at the administration. And that is Lena Khan an anti trust So will you do like a minute or two on the sort of real fulsome antitrust
legislation that the Biden administration tried to enact. And I would add their inability to message that to voters and to explain to them why that was good for them, Well, that's.
A great tragedy, actually, I mean, the good news is that during the Biden administration there was a resurrection of antitrust law in America. Lena Khan at the Federal Trade Commission, a chair put in there by Joe Biden. Also at the Anti Trust Division of the Justice Department, an anti trust system Attorney General Jonathan Cantor put in by the Biden administration, who and both of them, Cantor and linikon the strongest most aggressive use of antitrust law we've seen
in this country in fifty years. And it's appropriate because the whole industrial landscape, the entire economy has become much more concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer big corporations. They're using mergers and acquisitions and all sort of tactics to basically increase their market power. This is bad for America. It's bad for consumers. It means that workers have less
a choice of whom to work for. It means that workers have less bargaining strength and bargaining ability because these giant companies have much more bargaining strength because they're so big. And they also, these giant companies have a lot of political power, which they wouldn't have if anti trust were actually once again as it used to be a real part of the American political system. So you've got this sad.
I say, it's sad molly because the Biden administration Joe Biden, you know, bless his heart, he was you know, I'm going to use the past tense because he's no longer president. He was a strong union person, He walk the picket lines. He's the first Democratic president in thirty five, no, forty five years to staff his White House without any Wall streeters.
I mean, with economists who were not from Wall Street who really understand that the goal of the economy is to help people get better wages, better working conditions, improve the quality of the life of most people in this country. But Joe Biden didn't get credit because he sadly could not communicate effectively what he was doing. And that's I don't know. I mean, historians will have to figure out
exactly why that was the case. But it is a tragedy because as a result of that, people didn't know. Most workers didn't know what he was doing. Most people didn't know that he was breaking with years of Democrats who were not as nearly as strong on labor, or as on anti trust, or on investments in infrastructure and all sorts of things that people need. So it's a tragedy.
No moment, Rick Wilson, while we jogged fast.
It was a week filled with fuckery, so it should be no problem finding one.
This week was basically fuck mus I mean.
Jess, he is so happy with that.
I was. I have rarely seen a week more chuck full of fuckery. So my pinnacle of fuck mountain this week was Marker Review. And I will say I could admit this because I'm a man. I was a huge supporter Marco. I helped push Marco from the very beginning
when he's running. It's Charlie cristin Florida supported as presidential campaign, did a super pack for a bunch of wealthy Silicon Valley guys for his presidential campaign couch, and that little fuck sitting on that couch proves the point that if this was Cuba in the nineteen fifties, he'd be asking to polish Castro's shoes. This is a guy who absolutely
knew what he was doing in there. He took his entire reputation for the last twenty years of being someone who advocates for liberty and against dictatorship, and he burned it to the ground. And you could see his soul withering inside his pitiful little frame in that room.
Yeah, thoughts in prayers Marco.
You know it is interesting that he always looks like the little guy in the big chair. My moment of fuckery is Donald Trump crypto king?
Oh?
Yes, Crypto Reserve will elevate the critical industry. Yes, won't someone pour one out for Crypto.
Those struggling crypto guys.
After years of corrupt attacks by the Biden administration, Why does the Biden administration hate cryptos so much? And by corrupt a taxi means no regulation whatsoever.
Correct, Actually, that's centrue. There's a little regulation, but not nearly as much as it deserved.
He's going to make a crypto strategic perserve because even though we can't afford park rangers to keep bathrooms open, we can't afford cancer research, we can't afford FDA, we can't afford the FAA, which keeps you safe in the air, we can afford to buy lots of crypto and g I hope everyone's least favorite.
David Sachs is making a lot of money on this.
Because he is the cryptos are and he will he's in crypto, but he's also the cryptos are.
He's both an investor and a person who will marry money.
That could go wrong with that.
But also, what are the odds that a person and the Trump administration would both work in a company involved with something and also work with it on the government side. What are the odds? One and twenty percent a billion percent.
If it smells like deep, deep, deep corruption, it is in.
Fact probably deep corruption.
That's right. Welcome to our Banana Republican.
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