Rick Wilson, Cerise Castle & Blake Zeff

the student deck crisis. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the one the Only, Rick Wilson. Welcome too, Fast Politics. Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast, How are you goodad, How are you well. I'm here in beautiful Florida. The sun is shining. The airplane is waiting for you to go take it and push through the clear, beautiful skies of the great state of Florida for a couple of hoursternoon. But first I'm here with you, Kevin McCarthy.

You know what they say, when at first you don't succeed, try sorrow yourself at the feet of horrible people. Humiliate yourself over and over again. Give up all the key powers of your job in order to achieve the illusory title of Speaker of the House while Matt Gates, Lauren Bobert, Andy Biggs, Paul Gostar, Margie Taylor Green, and the rest of the clown caucus take over. Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Did you get it on the fifteenth

or the try day? And the Lord said, let me get the reason why this took so long and hurt so much. Kevin McCarthy is a hollow man. There's no real there there. He's just a vuncular kind of backslapping, you know, frat broke kind of guy who for years has kind of failed up and is not. He's not, as you may have picked up by now, he's not an exactly an intellectual, high horsepower guy. But he's been surrounded by a few people, including a guy that very

few people know about named Jeff Miller. Jeff Miller is one of d cs like what they call a tollbooth lobbyist firm, where unless you hired Jeff's firm, you don't get a meeting with Kevin. They may not do any work for you, but you have to show that you're hiring Kev's guy and Jeff Miller and this small cadre around Kevin have wanted this for twelve thirteen years now, and they were not going to give it up. So they decided they made a what would have looked like

a rational choice in Washington twenty years ago. They decided, Okay, we're gonna bullshit these Freedom Caucus assholes. We're just gonna tell them we're gonna do this stuff, and then later on we'll just jerk him off and we won't do it. This is, unfortunately for them, a category error right at the peak of dumb idea mountain, because those aren't the rules anymore. It's part of the clown car mountain range. They don't understand that the world doesn't work that way anymore.

These people now have extracted concessions on the rules and on people on committees, and those concessions make Kevin a speaker in name only. They have the ability now for one idiot, and believe me, the Republican Caucus, as you may be surprised to know, has more than one idiot. There's one idiot um for one idiot to call for no confidence voltus. Kevin was able to beat these people

down by offering them everything under the sun. Okay, that he offered them everything you want a foot massage, Yeah, okay, you gotta foot missage. You want me to come over and twork, I'll twork. Just imagine Kevin twets get Just get it out, get it into your mind, and so you can soon get it out of your mind. The idea that all these crazies got everything they wanted is

the thing that will make the house ungovernable. And the key element here, the key element here is that they extracted a concession from him that they weren't going to do a debt ceiling. So okay, let's look back for a second to Jeff Miller and to Kevin's real constituency, which is not the people of Fresno, California, God forbid? Right, certainly not. Yeah, it's the American Bankers Association, It's the hedge fund Bros. It's a lot of Wall Street investment banks,

a lot of private equity people. How much do you think they want to see the economy crash and burn when we decide we're not going to pay our debts, when we decide that we're going to um not pay Social Security medicare, medicaid and military salaries. How do you think that's gonna work out? It's not. And they recognized on the Freedom Caucus side, on the hyper Maga side, that we were going to have a world in which

Kevin McCarthy was their hostage and will be forever. The irony here is it's like, Okay, the terrorists have taken the plane, they've killed the hostages, and they've blown it up. Now let's give them the money and the helicopter so they can escape. The fuck. I mean, it's ninth seen people right like you could find. I mean, if he had just never gone Tomorrow Lago, he could have gotten nineteen blue dogs. He could have made a deal with him and the American people like that kind of ship.

If I had been Hackeim Jeffreys, I would have gone into Kevin's caucus and found a dozen people who were in Biden districts, and I would have said to them, you're gonna get a chairmanship, you're gonna get this committee. You're gonna be on ways and Means, you're gonna be on Armed Services. I would have handed out a tier committee assignments like they were fucking candy on Halloween to get the majority, and I'm a little disappointed they didn't

take that seriously enough. And I was told by by two separate Democratic members that they didn't want to do that because they thought that that would break up the two twelve votes they were consistently getting. That there would be people on the left would say, oh, no, you can't do that. This is a Democratic caucus. That's better to be in the minority than the majority, which is

a logic that I find somewhat lacking. I do think that they came out of last week Democrats looking really good, right. I mean, the speeches were really good. They all voted in lockstep. The speeches were great. They had a lot of unity. Because I always went for the fences, I would have gone for the majority if I was them. However, they did come out of it pretty cohesive, pretty solid, feeling like there's a degree of intentionality about this whole thing.

I thought it was a big moment for Katherine Clark to her speeches were really good. She's seemed very smart. I mean, I thought also Hakim sounded really good. And it looked like a mess, like every which way Republicans tried to spin it it still looked like a mass. Yeah. Look, there was nothing in this week that didn't scream out

ship show nothing. They were embarrassing, they were clumsy, and Kevin's desperation for the job was So there's a degree to which if you're the Speaker of the House you want to have a little bit of mr and dignity and power. Yeah, well that's that Chip is sailed. And this is a guy. This is a guy who's like, yeah, if you want to come and pee on me, Yeah, I know what you're thinking, do you? Yeah, I know

you know what I'm thinking. Sorry, as usual, Rixy's they described the line right, we don't need to open the door to but yes, I see what you're saying. I thought there was some pretty interesting reporting from the Washington Post about this idea that Mark Meadows was working with. These nineteen or so Freedom Caucus. By the way, they're

not Freedom Caucus. Most of them are new The Freedom Caucus people are actually supporting Kevin because Kevin has been working really hard to get those Freedom Caucus votes for the LAB since two thousand fifteen. Yeah, let's be really

clear about something, Molly. This is a great example of why the d C reporting culture is so fucking broken because they tried to turn this into a race where Kevin McCarthy and his moderate allies against these nineteen crazies get the funk out of here, right, I mean, get the hot funk out of here. The nineteen crazies were just outliers in a pack of crazies. A hundred and forty nine members of Kevin's moderate group voted against certifying

the two thousand and twenty election. Their chock full of election deniers, anti factor's, conspiracy theorists, lunatics, the most ungodly post conservative, post Republican anarchists and nihilists and show voters that you've ever seen in your life. You know, we're not trying to bring back George Herbert Walker Bush or Ronald Reagan's party. God, thank God, excuse me, ma'am, but no, look at the Darwin's favorite president. Since I worked for him,

since I worked for him, I have a soft spot. Yes, but your son is red pilled now clearly and pretty pretty, is gonna say, mom. You know, Mike Sernovich has some really good points. Jesus Christ. Anyway, let's get back to the case at hand here. But so we have these nineteen insurrectionists though they're all insurrectionists, but we have nineteen

more insurrection insurrectionists. They're just a little more insurrection e. Right there, the congressional Kardashians of a Sword, the Chaos Caucus, the Chaos Caucus, and they now have everything they want. Some of them voted president like mcates, some of them went for Kevin. Now we have this motion to vacab which you only need one crazy for. So, I mean, I think what's important here is there's a democratic Senate, there's a democratic president. So they can't pass any bills.

They have no intention molly of doing any kind of governing. This is going to be show trial after show trial after show trial after show trial. Right, it's been right. This has been Ghazi to electric Buggaloo. One of the things that was in the deal structure that they got from Kevin was our committee on Hunter Bud's Laptop needs a bigger budget than the one six committee. Can they control that? I mean, theoretically Congress controls the budget, but

not really. Right, they will have everything they need for an endless, joyous, never ever for a moment breaking character political circus that they are so excited about They're harder than Jim Jordan outside of the locker room. They can't wait for this ship to go crazy. And they believe rightly, by the way, and this is where the Democrats need

a little bit of tough love. They believe correctly that they can use all these hearings about everything the border and Afghanistan and loped Hope and ray Epps and the FBI. They believe they can use this to whip up their base, that they can whip up the crazies. They can make the crazies feel like that they found their secret sauce. It's the Twitter files. They believe that they can give the crazies a hook and that that hook will go into so that the election will be about this imaginary

you know again, right, which is possible. I said that in that voice to be as offensive as possible to the people who believe in Hunter Biden's laptop. It's like with so many things in Trump world, like it's possible that this works for them. It's possible that it blows up for them. I mean like it could be Bill Clinton and the blow job, it could be Benghazi. It's

too soon to tell. Ultimately, I think that's largely correct, Molly, and I think that there's a degree to which the show trial nature of it really comes down, as so many things in the Republican world do to Rupert Murdoch and and to Lachland increasingly, do they turn these hearings into you know, the Fox News daily programming memo, as they did for Benghazi? I don't know that answer. Now, all the alt media on the Republican you know ecosystem, now this will be the head of news Max at

all times, every day. This will be the lead story on every conservative And I used this term advisedly thought this podcast, I think ironically. Yes, then Shapiro will declare that this has the most consequential moments nothing good, nothing good. Sorry, Did I just imitate Ben Shapiro when he was a chipmunk with a cattle brought up his ass? Yes? I did. He will always take the lowest possible road, but facts and logic tell me that this is right, and he

will do it with fast talking. But the question of where this goes we don't quite know. But yes, I mean, definitely bad for Democrats. I know where it goes, Molly. It goes for months and months and months and months and months, and they try to use this to prepare the battlefield, to portray Joe Biden as corrupt or incompetent, or whatever else is in their brain. We're as bad as Trump, which is the goal, right, because they need him to be as bad as Donald Trump. They need

him to be a danger to the country. They need this entire fantasy that that they're going to whip up for their base. You know, it's not going to come out of it criminal charges against you, It's not going to come out of it any real change. What will come out of it is they will impeach Joe Biden. They will impeach ma Orchist, they will impeach Harris, They'll probably impeach Pete Buddhagaz just for being just for just for owning the Fox people. They've said they won't, but

that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Good luck. How dare you, Mr Speaker, not bring impeachment charges against the most corrupt president of our time? Screamed Matt Gates from the floor. I call for a vote of no confidence. Yeah, that seems likely. That's how it works. You don't think it just ends up that McCarthy just ends up getting kicked out before that even happens. Look, I think when the dead ceiling comes around, McCarthy has to make a deal.

That's the ball game. It's over. They get rid of him, and then you have Steve Scalies, who's been waiting in the wings this all time. Well, here's the thing. Though Steve Scalise is a little too establishment for some people. He hasn't been as vocally constantly loyal. The real person to keep your eye on is Gretchen Wieners. Who's that at least depon. Yes, folks, I made a mean girl joke on Molly's podcast. Yeah yeah, yeah, Yeah, She's the one that you keep your eye on because A she's

got a really strong whip operation. B. She was certainly out whispering people's ears this week. Like, well, if it doesn't work out for Steve, I'm certainly, you know, willing to serve. Uh huh. She really is got a lot of ambition. No, no, no, no, Molly. Her ambition is definitional. It towers over every other aspect of her character. If she can be said to have character other than ambition, you think she could be the kind of waiting in the wings. Oh, I absolutely know she's waiting in the wings.

She's she's not even shy about it. She's not even pretending it's it's not the only thing she wants. It's the only thing she wants. But I just want to get back to his idea for second. But Kevin McCarthy painted this as a big victory for Donald Trump. I want to get to the final most important point here.

Another thing that I that I you know, if you went through this week and we we actually Lincoln made a video compilation of reporters and analysts saying, well shows the end of Donald Trump's influence over the party, y'all. Donald Trump's guy won. Donald Trump's guy went out right right after the vote and said Donald Trump made this possible. I'm here because of Donald Trump. I serve and obey

the Great Liege Lord of Mara Lago, Donald Trump. Donald Trump's asked smells like sunshine and honeysuckle not to push back too hard here because I think you're right. But if this reporting from the Washington Post is correct, mark

Meadows was whipping these twenty insurgents against Kevin. So does this mean that Mark Meadows is no longer be in lockstep with Donald Trump, or that Donald Trump is no longer in lockstep with Mark Meadows, or that Donald Trump was whipping these insurgents with playing three dimensional chess, which seems impossible to me. I mean, what do you think that is a man? I think we've got a meaningful chance here. That Mark Meadows is is a cat's paw here for the chaos factor here. They like to play

these things. Trump would have declared victory either way, right, But Meadows was whipping against McCarthy. Meadows has a narrow survival band now in his life. He has to be in that world. He's never coming back to be a you know, he's not a guy that's going to end up at Barbara Griffith and Rogers or some other DC consulting firm. As a former member of Congress and former wedolse you have stuff of council now to the firm, of value added to our serious corporate clients. That's never happening.

He has to be in that ecosystem of cuckoo, right. But you would think Trump would be the conduit to that. But here's the thing. Trump made a decision that he looked at the overall whip count and even with all of the session in Washington that Kevin was the moderate candidate. Trump understood. Kevin will always bend for him. Kevin is predictable,

he is explicable. He's the kind of Washington creature that Trump was able to suborne and manipulate and break over and over and over and over again in the last seven years. He gets it. He understands that those people are are what he wants. They are a patsy for him. He doesn't even have to sell that hard and they'll bend over and say yes, sir. Right. Thank you. Rick Wilson always always a pleasure. Thank you, thank you, Thank you for joining us. You are welcome. As always, I

will talk to you so series. Castle is a reporter and host of the podcast A Tradition of Violence. Welcome to Vast Politics series. Thank you so much for having me. This is such an interesting and important topic. I'm so glad you're here to talk about it. My first question for you is the police department in Los Angeles has a gang? Yes, it's the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles, although I have heard reports of gangs in the l

a p D as well. I've been covering the Sheriff's Department for about two years now, and in those two years, I have uncovered about twenty one different deputy gangs that are operating within the Sheriff's department. A deputy gang is just like a criminal street gang. The only real difference is that they have the backing of local government, the funding of local government, and the legal ability to kill people and get away with it with no consequences. So

they're a little like the oath Keepers. Yes, and many members of these deputy gangs are members of white supremacist organizations, the youth Keepers. It's so funny because it's not funny, but the l a p D has been at the forefront of doing some of the worst crimes that we've ever seen police do, right, I mean, And it's so odd to me because it's like, you think about Los Angeles as a blue city in a blue state, and yet their police force is real sketchy. Can we talk

about that, Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. And I just want to make sure that I'm being clear. Most of my work is in the Sheriff's Apartment, which is a different organization that the police, the County of Los Angeles U l A p D. Has the city and there is some overlap. The Sheriff's Department does come into the city of l A. Just explain that to people who are not as in it. So the Sheriff's Department is the larger organization. Yes, it's the largest law enforcement agency in

the United States. It has about eighteen thousand employees, ten thousand of whom are sworn police officers with police officer abilities. Those are the ones out on the street that you

see patrolling um in the sheriff uniform. In the sheriff car they now wear cowboy hats, which is kind of funny because Los Angeles is a metropolitan city, but something that they do and the l A p D is responsible for the city of Los Angeles just within city limits l A s D they patrol unincorporated Los Angeles County. They patrol cities within the County of Los Angeles that have contracted their law enforcement services to the Sheriff's Department.

That's places like Compton, West Hollywood. Those are the main differences between the two. The Sheriff's Department does come into the City of Los Angeles sometimes because they do have contracts with l A City. Facilities like our community colleges here in the city of Los Angeles for a long time. They have the contract for a public transportation so you do see them. You see them in court. They are responsible for providing services to the court, so they're doing

bailiff services things like that. But yeah, those are the main two differences between the two. Can you explain to me why this gang has been able to flourish. There are a couple of different reasons for that. I would say one the culture. The gang problem is a symptom of a much larger issue with l a s D culture. It's a violent culture. It's a culture that encourages, frankly, the assault of residents. It's a culture that encourages working

backward is a term that I've heard a lot. That's when you, you know, find someone that is guilty of a crime, and you figure out how they're guilty of it later, you just worry about arresting them first and getting that arrested out And deputy gangs, that's just that's just a symptom of this larger culture. There are a lot of issues within the Sheriff's department. I think the deputy gangs exacerbate a lot of those issues, but they are really just one part of a really demented puzzle.

So what are the political allegiances of these gangs? Yeah, so mostly from what I've been able to tell, these gangs have sympathies with white supremacist leaning groups um Fruently. At a special hearing into the Deputy Gangs UM that is being held for the first time in history by the Civilian Oversight Commission, they displayed some photos taken within a locker room at one of the stations, and among the deputy gang paraphernalia was the logo of the oath

keepers UM right next to each other. That makes a lot of sense, right, Oh, most definitely. I mean these deputy gangs. You know, it's been alleged that in order to get into them, you need to kill someone. If you are a person of color, it's been alleged that you need to kill someone of your same ethnicity to get into the sang. One of these gangs was found by a federal judge to be a white supremacist neo Nazi gang. And many of these gangs are built on

tenements of white supremacy. So it's not really surprising to me that they are outwardly aligning themselves with groups like that. So now we have the first time ever a black woman mayor in Los Angeles. I mean, can she do anything? I know that the way that the government in Los Angeles works is it's complicated, and mayors actually don't have that much power, right because there's a whole city council structure.

But I mean, do you think that Karen Bass can get in there and uh, is she going to be able to break up this craziness? No? And Karen Bass actually has no power to do anything about the deputy gangs um since they are a county agency and she's mayor of the city. They don't touch each other um, so she has no no impact on the operation of these gangs. We did just elect a new sheriff. His

name is Robert Luna. It's only the second time in a hundred years that an incumbent sheriff has been defeated, and we actually did that back to back in Los Angeles County. We defeated the incumbent in twenty eighteen when we elected Sheriff Alex Banueva, who went on to really protect and uplift the culture and practice of deputy gangs, and he was defeated as a result of that. In this past election by challenger Robert Luna. The first guy you elected was focused on getting rid of the gangs.

Sheriff Alex Bienueva campaigned on being a progressive Democrat. He'd never really said much about deputy gangs, but a few quotes that I did find from when he was campaigning in twenty seventeen eighteen, he was essentially communicating that they weren't really that big of a deal. And when he was elected, we saw him rehiring deputies that are known to be deputy gang members who had been fired. We saw him placing a woman who is affiliated with a

deputy gang called the Banditos. She is responsible for the deaths of two children, she ran over them in her car, and he immediately promoted her and made her his chief assistant, working right underneath him. And that was how the Sheriff's department operated for four years, just openly supporting these deputy gang members, going after people within the department and outside

of the department who brought attention to the issue. Myself, I've been detained at press conferences as a result of my reporting the sheriff himself has held press conferences to tell people that I am a liar and that I should be sued in a court of law. He even held a radio show where for an hour he ranted about how I made everything about deputy gangs up in order to enrich myself, which couldn't be further from the truth.

As a result of my reporting, I've received death threats, I've had to move, I've had to complete really changed the way I live my life. And it's it's not really a journalism is in a financial boon for anyone that's in the industry. You already know that, certainly true. Wait, so this new sheriff's deputy day, can you tell us about him? Yeah? Our new sheriff is Robert Luna. He worked at the Long Beach Police Department for about thirty

six years before being elected our sheriff. I think a lot of people were really anxious to vote Vieneva out and he was able to capitalize on that and make his way to a victory. He came out very strong in the final weeks of the campaign and made a promise to eliminate deputy gangs from two stations that we know the stations are effectively controlled by this deputy gang and not you know, a captain or personnel. We'll see, he's been in office for about two and a half

weeks now, we'll see. This isn't a problem that's going to be solved in four years. And I think Robert Luna would agree with that. But this is someone that you know, for the first time in four years, is saying we do have an issue here, and I, like many Los Angeles County residents, are curious to see what he's going to do to combat this issue. Do you feel a little bit hopeful? No, not really. This is an issue that has been going on in the department

since at least the nineteen sixties. According to my research and my reporting, this deputy gang system has been entrenched so firmly, so many people in the upper echelons of management and the Sheriff's Department deputy gang members themselves. They have these tattoos, and it's been going on that way for over fifty years. I don't think that one man can get rid of the issue in four years. I don't think that the policies that are currently in place

do enough to address this issue head on. I don't ink that the department and local government is at a place where they truly want to put a stop to this. Like for example, in one week, just a few months ago, the county Board of Supervisors approved forty seven million dollars in settlement payouts to people that have eive either been killed or brutally assaulted by the Sheriff's Department, resulting in

long term damages. And when these settlement payments are approved, the Sheriff's Department needs to come up with something called a corrective action plan to address what went wrong and to make sure that something like this, you know, doesn't happen again, so we don't have community members getting hurt and we're not costing the county millions and millions of dollars. And in every corrective action plan that I reviewed this year,

the Sheriff's Department admits no fault. They're saying there's nothing we did wrong, we did everything perfectly, and it's completely on the fault of the dead, unarmed person that we're now having to pay this much money. There's a lot of intervention that could be done before that. I mean, the board has a lot of power. The Sheriff's department. They don't enforce their own policies. I covered a shooting

death this week. We just learned that the district attorney won't be charging the deputies who killed Frederick Holder, who was an unarmed twenty eight year old black man who was stopped at a freeway on ramp. They shot at him thirty three times. They hit him eleven times, completely destroying his body, and the district attorney will not be

charging these people for doing that. In my reporting, I found that the deputies who killed Frederick violated no less than four direct policies, their own department policies, and there was no discipline for them. They killed Demand, they broke every policy in the process of doing it, and they will face no consequences. So no, I'm not really optimistic that any of this is going to change because we've seen, you know, the opportunity come and go to make these

changes and nothing has been done. Who has jurisdiction here to make those changes? Yeah, well, I mean predominantly the sheriff's department. It's on the sheriff's department to enforce. Who has jurisdiction over the sheriff's department, Because I think the idea that the police are going to fix themselves seems more and more like, you know, like ludicrous. Yeah, yeah, and I would say so. Well, the Sheriff's department does

have an oversight body called the Civilian Oversight Commission. They were given the power to subpoena people by the voters a few years ago. But the thing about that is that even though the Civilian Oversight Commission has subpoenaed the sheriff and the under sheriff about six times, this is Sheriff Viennueva, they have defied those subpoenas and they have not come to answer questions. Now, me, as a citizen, if I were to defy subpoena, I would end up

in jail. But Sheriff Viennueva is not in jail, and either's Under Sheriff Murakami there out, you know, living their lives to the fullest. And the police union, they are called the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. They've come out strong and said that we will also fight any subpoenas that you issue for our deputies. Um Civilian Oversight Commission,

they are not going to respect your subpoenas. So you literally have the head of the law enforcement agency and all of the people that are supposed to be enforcing the law coming out and saying, we do not think the law applies to us, and we will not be following it. So while these bodies do have some some power, no one respects them. The agency itself does not respect the power that it has, so effectively they have none. Jesus Christ. It strikes me that it would be really

scary to be targeted by the police. So yeah, I mean, at first it was a little scary. When the series first published. I had to go into hiding because there were so many specific threats on my life. It's not a great failing to be warm earns by cops a lot of the time saying hey, you're talking about you. I'm worried about you. Do you own a gun? Oh God, that's really scary. But at this point I just take it as I'm doing something right. I must be onto

something and I'm not going to stop. Yeah a man, good for you, man, thank you for your work, and thank you for doing this and this is what it's all about. So thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I know you our dear listeners are very busy and you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of pieces of pundentry tweak. This is why every week I put together a newsletter of

my five favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up at Fast Politics pod dot com and clip the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast Politics pod dot com. Blake Zef is the director of Lone Wolves. Welcome too, Fast Politics. Blake z Hi, thanks for having me. I am thrilled to have you. I want to talk to you about this movie you just directed called Lone Wolves. They're not lone Wolves, right, they're

lone Wolves. Discuss it's Lone Wolves l o A night, so you guys can be my pun. There's kind of two puns going on, so Lone Wolves l O A n because they're talking about student loans, although a lot more than that. But also there are a lot of people in the film who have been fighting this system and trying to expose this problem for a long time. But they've been doing it on their own, and they've

been almost like shouting into the winds. So in a way, I think of them as lone wolves, but not lone wolves l O any l o a N Does that make anything? Yes? First, I want to know you worked in government before this so explained to us how you got here. Yeah. So, like you said, I worked in government and politics for ages. I was Cenator Humors communications director. I worked on President Obama's too as an eight campaign.

I worked on a lot of things, and so I really have a sense of how the system works, and I think that's what I was able to bring to this process. And then, you know, after I worked in government, I was then on the media side, journalism, investigative journalism, did a lot of you know, on air commentary places like MSNBC. So I had both of those kind of backgrounds, being in the politics side and then also the media side.

And then this problem with student debt I sort of saw up close because my wife had gone to grad school and she had two dollars in student debt. And it wasn't even just the numbers that kind of interested me, but I was seeing the fine print and the notices and the kind of the sketchy way in which the lending companies were dealing with her, and I kind of got curious because there's forty five million people in this country who have student loans, and I thought, this, this

is crazy. Is this just happening to us? So I started to look into it and realized, oh my god, this system is so much crazier than I ever would have thought in a million years. There was so much predatory lending going on, corruption, lying, conniving. The government, I would find out, played a big hand in secretly causing this crisis, which we can talk about. And then in terms of getting the solution, I would find that there actually was a solution they were working on, but that

was being stalled. This really turned into a crazy drama and who done it to the point where I realized this isn't just like an article or something like that, this is a movie. What is this solution? Great question? So I personally believe that you have to have a two pronged approach. So people talk about student debt cancelation, right, and that's fine, that's good, But that only takes care

of people who already have the debt. Right, As someone in the movie says, yeah, you cancel all the debt today, We'll start having new debt tomorrow and you know, next semester, and you'll still have all the fundamental systemic problems will still exist. So canceling student debt, that's fine, that's a retroactive solution looking back. You also have to have a forward looking solution that fixes the structure. So to me,

there's a couple of ways you can go. One is, you know, this is people talk about there's a lot free college. You know, our parents and grandparents generations. That was actually pretty common, it's common in other countries when European countries do that. There's obviously community college. But the other thing is, and this is gonna sound wonky, but

I promise your viewers, I'm sorry your listeners, it's not. So. It turns out that two lines were added into a three d page bill at the last minute that made it set. Student debt was basically one of the only loans you can't get rid of through bankruptcy. So you and I could go gambling tonight in Vegas. We could rack up ten million dollars in debt, and then we could just charge that debt in bankruptcy. That's okay. But somehow, for some reason, in two lines were snuck in that

said that you can't do that with student loans. And the problem with that is a obviously, if people want to, you know, file for bankruptcy and get out from like their hundred fifty dollar debt, they can't do it. But the second thing is if the lenders know that bankrupt there's not even a threat of bankruptcy, and they know that repayment is guaranteed no matter what, well they'll just

lend out money to anyone for any amount. It's a little bit like the housing crisis when they were giving out mortgages to anyone whether they could handle it or not. And the colleges know this too, So the colleges will just jack up their prices at will because they know that the money is going to be repaid no matter what. And Molly, I don't know if you know, like maybe you're more than know than I was. Do you have any idea how much it costs for to pay for

like a year of two Lane university right now? Seventy eight dollars you're pretty good, it's eighty five dollars. Yeah, I have a kid in college, so yes, okay, do you know so I've been talking, I've been going around good to these colleges lately and they're like, yeah, it's five thousand bucks and a lot of these schools it's just gotten control. So the answer is, I think on one end, debt cancelation makes sense, but forward looking, we need to have more free college options, we need to

have bankruptcy protections restored. And just one last thing on that note, because I know it sounds a little wonky, the two lines that were snuck into that bill in no one admitted that they were the one behind it. It was done totally anonymously, and our movie sets out to find who did it, and we ultimately do find that person and have a crazy confrontation with them. Wait stop, who was the person? Give us a hint. You don't have to tell us. I'll give you a hint. It's

a Republican. Well it might not. It's a it might not be. So, Oh Jesus fucking Christ, this is very important. You know Steve Cornaki for this NBC. Yes, So he's an expert in politics and he's a friend of mine. So in the film, I sit down with him and I'm like, what was going on in the nineties And he's like, look, this happened right around the time of Montica Lewinsky stuff impeachment. Clinton was looking to get things done, and this bill actually passed unanimously to nothing because most

of the things and it were good. But these two lines that were snuck in. We were looking at basically three Republican members of Congress. We're focusing in on those three, and then ultimately there's a total supper Eyes twist. And the only thing I'll say in terms of the twist is, We'll give you two hints. One is it was someone that I had never heard of before. And number two, that person is now a truck driver in Colorado. What you can't get up, Molly? It's crazy? And so I

track them down in Colorado. We have a confrontation. I'm showing him, you know how bad the crisis has gotten now, and he basically at the end he's like, listen, if you've got bad student debt today, you are a damn fool. And so we have this crazy confrontation. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, people, you gotta watch this. People. It's not if you don't even care about student debt, you should, But if you don't, that's okay. This movie is crazy. There's a who done it?

It's funny in a lot of places. I think you guys will really get a kick out of it. That is amazing. So I just want to get back to this idea of student debt. There's people who are making money on this debt. Who are that So there is a student loan industry. There are student lenders, there are banks. You've probably heard of, Sally May. This is a major,

more billion dollar industry, and this won't surprise you. One of the things they do is they give very generously in terms of campaign contributions to members of Congress to try to preserve the system that is enriching them. The other thing I want to mention though here is most people now, like roughly of the student loans that people have are now held by the government. President Obama saw that this system was really messed up, and so in sort of the middle of his tenure, they decided to

take over the student lending system essentially. So it used to be a lot more private loans. Now you have a lot of them are federal loans that are held by the government. And so these huge amounts of money that people are owing are actually owed to their government. And so it's kind of a weird thing where the government is making money with interest off of the Herican people just for trying to get an education. There's no way to stop those. I mean, look, we're we tried

to expose all this the film. You know, we really show a lot of craziness because I mean, there's one person named Vivian I think is really interesting. You know, a lot of people are like, I don't want to give death forgiveness to doctors and lawyers. That's like one of the big talking point, right is a doctor. But let me tell you about her. And this is what I think is so interesting. She grew up very, very poor in New York City and her parents didn't speak English.

They had like an eighth grade education. Her mom died of cancer when she was really young, so she had a really tough childhood, and she decided at that young age that she wanted to become work really hard, become a doctor so she could serve at what they call low resource centers and clinics, which is for people don't have a lot of money. She trying to give back to the same people in the same way that people had helped her family when her mom was you know,

experiencing cancer. So she works her butt off, gets into Cornell, gets into n y U Met School. Now she's a doctor, but she has two hundred fifty dollars in debt. She can't afford to work at that clinic that she wanted to. The whole reason she got into this, you know, field, was that she could give back, and now she can't even afford to do that. So there's a real cost of society. And what made me think of her when you were asking about this and we were talking about

how the government holds a lot of these loans. She is paying her government and is in debt to her government while is trying to be u surface to people in this country. And then when COVID happened, Molly, she was working at Mount Sinai. She was one of the heroes saving people in this country from COVID, working around o'clock, twenty four hours a day, really a national hero. And meanwhile she owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to her government while she's being a hero and working so hard

to do that. It's just so messed up. Is there any appetite with legislators to change this? There is? So there's student debt cancelation, which Biden is trying to do, but the Republicans immediately pounced on it and challenged him in court, and they eventually found a Republican judge who agreed with them. So it's being halted and now that's going to go to the Supreme Court next year. Molly, I don't have to tell you the composition to Supreme Court's life. So there's not a ton of optimism about

what they're going to do there. So that is one avenue they could try to do that legislatively. But I speak to Sendra Schumer in the film and he says they don't have the votes for that because you know, don't have Republicans are for that, So that is very tenuous. What else should we know about this movie? Alley? There is a bill called s to Okay, S to five Nights, the Fresh Start the Bankruptcy Act. Dick Durban is a sponsor of this, of all people, his co sponsor is

John Cornyn, and they've got Josh Holly on this. This is a truly bipartisan bill. Holy. It would make it so that you can discharge student debt through bankruptcy, which almost any other debt you can get rid of through bankruptcy doesn't make any sense that you can. And so Dick Durban in the movie tells me that he's going to do everything he can to push this through the committee this year. Well, there's only a couple of weeks left this year. So if people want to see this happen,

call center Dick Durban's office this week. There's something that can actually be done without having to go to the Supreme Court, without having to go through you know, all these other methods. This is something that can be done, is very doable. We talked to Schumer in the movie, we talked to Durban about it. This is something that could really make a difference. So not all hope is lost. That's fantastic. So what's the bill called again, s like

for Senate to nine eight. That's like the technical term him. But then the build like the fund name is the Fresh Start through Bankruptcy Act, and this would take get to the federal Student loans can be discharge through bankruptcy in the same way that almost any other debt can. I mentioned gambling debts can be discharged with bankruptcy, excessive shopping,

credit card debt, pretty much anything. We have this scene in the movie where I have this bankruptcy lawyer, this like kind older gentleman, and I subject him to this really ridiculous thing where I put him in like a lightning round, like it's a game show, and I name two kind of debts and he has to say which one is harder to get rid of, and it's always something versus student loans. And in every case, student loans is harder to get rid of through bankruptcy than anything else.

So it's ridiculous stuff. So this law would change that, and it would give people a chance to get out from under their debt. But also it would make the system more fair because then college lenders and colleges would no longer be able to just keep jacking up the prices without having any check on them. Very interesting. The movie is called Lone Wolves. You can stream it on peacock right now, and if you watch it, hit me up on Twitter at Blake Zeth and let me know

what you thought. I'm interacting with everyone. There's tons of comments going on, and I love it interacting with viewers, so I hope people enjoy it. And thank you Molly so much for having me on. Thanks Blake, Take care that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds and politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend

and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.