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 Donald Trump says Sidney Powell was never his attorney, and of course there's a tweet saying otherwise. We have such a fun show for you. Today, Semaphore's Dave Weigel drops by to talk about the hidden details in the latest FEC filing in the twenty twenty four presidential race.
Then we'll talk to New York Times as Nick.
Corus Santini about the really fascinating new political dynamic in the great state of Mississippi and how Democrats could finally change the tide there. But first we have the new weekly guest every single Monday. You may remember him as being the King of the Panhandle, the host of the Enemies List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome Enemies List, Fred Comrade.
Oh, now you're going to trigger all the people on the Internet who don't know what comrade or communism or socialism really is.
It's always my favorite. You're an authoritarian, Nazi, socialist crypto. Okay, shut up, people.
Welcome, Welcome Rick Wilson. Just for those the few who don't recognize your voice. My man, Rick Wilson.
The band is back together.
We're literally just here to gloat about Jim Jordan.
You know, twenty five votes. We're recording this at just afternoon on Friday. Twenty five votes. Now, how's it going for you, Jim?
You feeling good? Brother?
My favorite moment was he decided I'm going to have a press conference where I use the bully pulpit bully, and then we're going to grind it out all weekend. Meanwhile, a lot of members aren't even there.
Yeah, and you know, I call me crazy, but the application of the hot new political tactic of death threats to family members has somehow non worked out to Jim Jordan's. Somebody asked me this morning, like if you're met Jordan. I'm like, yeah, I met I'm a bunch of times back in the day. And they're like, what did you think of him? I'm like, he really is dumb. Now, don't mistake but Jim Jordan has a kind of like fairal animal cunning about him. But this is a guy
who thinks he's smart. Because you listen to a lot of Rush Limbaugh in the nineteen nineties.
The last time we talked about Jim Jordan, which is you know, we talk a lot.
You said, Jim Jordan looks like he has rabies.
Yeah, yes, I did not wrong. He is a guy who looks the part he's playing of Rabbid.
He looks like a guy whose family engaged in generations of enthusiastic and breeding up in a holler somewhere in Pennsyltuckia.
I feel think you're gonna get canceled for every word in that sentence pedicle, Tuckie, that's a real.
Thing reading listen.
I can't say it because I'm an elitist globalist quote unquote.
I'm worse than an elitist globalist. I'm an elitist globalist neocon. I get a long email today about my sins as a neocon and that my thirty plus year career in politics had only been to serve quote the global Jew.
The global jew. What about the military industrial comment.
I'm not going to reveal more of my dirty laundry. This email is like fifteen pages long of like various links and the'm not going to click on and terrible memes and like your whole career.
You should be ashamed. Your whole career has been in service to the global Jew. I'm like, like the local Jew.
You know.
I'm well, I'm in urga Jew as a rule, you know.
But I mean I have to say, this is like this moment in American life where Jews we are popular. It's like the first time ever my whole life. I'm forty five years old, and like the polling is like Americans love Jews.
I'm like, let's go.
Man, this is her moment, soon to be eclipsed by another genocide.
But we'll take it for now.
You know, what's the downside? What could possible?
So you're listening to this on Monday, but I want to talk to you about the carnage of Friday because one of the amazing inadvertent laugh lines, and there were many Kevin McCarthy talking about what a great legislator Jim Jordan was.
It was almost like borsh belt humor in the room. Take my wife place, who's cheering?
They were cheering.
The Democrats lost their minds correctly because there's a moment where look, here's the thing about politics. There are these formalities and these traditions and these sort of modes of speaking that are inherently political, and it's to say, my good friend, the honorable gentleman from the state of Arkansas. But when you say the words in a sentence in front of humans, who can think Jim Jordan is an
effective legislator? Of course the reaction is people are running like like just dying, like howling with laughter, because it's like saying that I'm a terrific ballerina. It's like praising, you know, my ability to play the saxophone. These are things that I know what they are, but I couldn't do them. He had a gun to my head. And honestly, why would you pick Kevin McCarthy to endorse I mean, this is a guy who's like radioactive waste in the
House of Representatives right now in the Republican caucus. The people who loved him are like, you idiot, but people who hate him are like, why is he endorsing Jim Jordan?
And so Jordan's going backwards right now. There was a moment yesterday on well Thursday, where that Patrick McHenry boomlet happened, and I was told by a staffer, a Republican staffer interestingly in the House that they thought they were going to have a moment where they could get mckenry in, and then an article ran that said Wall Street.
Joyous over possible McHenry, and it was like.
All the money's like no, now we must now, we must purge the tiny wee fellow.
By the way, I do want to say, he's adorable, and we're not going to make fun of the fact that he's short. We're going to make fun of the fact that he has looked like he was fifty since he was twenty nine years old.
Yes, that is correct. He is an old man.
He has always been an old man in a young man's body.
But I don't find him unattractive.
Well you know, I mean, I'm not going to ask you to weigh in as a very heterosexual man on whether or not you would would do McHenry.
But I don't think he's going to tack.
I wish the podcast viewers right now can see the fluttering of my eyes and the rolling back in my head.
You really we need a visual for that.
I really am a robustly heterosexual guy, regardless of what the magus think online.
So would you No.
I mean in the FMK game, he's kind of a Mary Yeah.
More than any anything else.
He's adorable.
Can I just say, these Wall Street people, those are your donors?
Maga, like they're your donors.
This is the great part of this whole story is Wall Street and private equity and a lot of the tech people that are the bread and butter of Republican major donor world. Right now, they have been frozen for ten days, Yeah, they have been frozen, well twelve days now, really, and what have they seen from Joe Biden. They've seen an American president boldly striding the world foreign policy successes, going out there representing the country effectively and ably putting the lie to all this.
Jose too old to even move out of his future in all that crap.
This is second war zone visit.
Right, second war zone visit, and once again, Donald Trump's last visit to a war zone was a disco in Turtle Bay in nineteen seventy seven.
That's right, Studio fifty four was his Vietnam right. But it's a really good point they I have to say, like last night, I was listening to Lawrence's show this morning and Lawrence was like, I'm going to Africa and if I can get.
My jet lag as well as Joe Biden.
I mean, the man has been crossing the globe again again.
In my old life, I traveled a lot to a lot of places.
And this guy is eighty years old, and he's up and going off the plane and rolling into diplomatic and political meetings with Beebee and his cabinet. He's talking to first responders in the families who've been injured by the Hamas terrorist attack. He is talking to American military forces, getting briefing from them on what's going on. This is a robust guy. He is a man in full and yes, part of this is I'm going to be sixty in a couple of weeks.
Right right after Thanksgiving, right twenty first.
Yeah, and here's the thing. I have a demonic amount of energy. I am up early, I go hard, I am like always whatever damn thing is in my brain. But this guy is twenty years older than me, and he's killing it. He gets back off the plane, rolls into the Oval Office and delivers one of the best
foreign policy speeches that I've ever seen. And I say that as a student of presidential rhetoric and speeches and politics, and people are going to look back on that and by the way if you blind if you did a blind listing to that and said, hey, did you hear the speech from Donald Trump where he said and you read them Biden's speech, Republicans would be like.
Yeah, that's a miracle. That's America. We're strong, We're toough, that's American values. There.
If you told them that was Ronald Reagan, they go, of course, it was Ronald Reagan. It was inspiring, it was uplifting. It was the greatest, the greatest of America's values put on the world stage. But instead now they're going Joe Baden was drooling into his depends on the vision, the over office, the triggering he is imposing right now on people like Bongo and all the various weirdos. It has been magnificent to watch. It has been delightful to watch because he just won't die.
He just won't fall over the dead. He just won't drool on himself.
He's presidenting at a level that would make Donald Trump fan himself and call for or his fileo fish valet.
But let's talk about Donald Trump's filet of fish valet. No, I don't think he had a diet coke button. But he didn't have a filet of fish valet. But back from the House to that speech, and I want to talk about that speech. It was a short speech, but it was the traditional American values. Stop genocide are sort of American values since World War Two. Stop genocide. This is cheaper to do it now than later.
What did you think?
And also, I'm going to ask you a question here, what you're going to hate? This is going to make you crazy because this is the thing that makes you crazy. This is one of my I know, the couple things that really make you grez. Do you feel like there is a section of the Democratic Party that just could not hear what Biden had to say last night.
Yes, it's a small and frankly vocal. It's small, it's vocal, but it's frankly smaller than I expected it would be in the terms of the crisis we're watching right now.
I think that.
There is a near unanimity in the Democratic Party about what's at stake, because this isn't just sort of a reflexive anti Israel rhetoric. There are people who understand now that the stakes aren't the Palestinians protesting in the streets of London or Washington or New York. It's been made manifest now that Hamas will kill children and slit their throats, that Hamas will torture hostages and send the tapes to
their families, that Hamas will hold Americans hostage. And the Democratic Party it has had, it's been dangling in front of them, and Joe Biden has taken it. They can recapture the position in the mind of the American people as a robust, moral foreign policy leadership role that they really had sort of lost Vietnam, sort of really polluted
it because of Johnson. That's probably been since JFK or FDR or Truman, where they've had this sense of they're the strong foreign policy party because you know what, I don't see I see an eighty bit fraction of Democrats right now who are I don't even want to say pro Hamas, but so pro Palestinian that their anti Semitism is just starting to creep in. But what do you
see in the Republican Party. You see an enormous well that too, but you see an enormous number of Republicans now who are out there tweeting Hamas propaganda just because it hurts Joe Biden. You're seeing an enormous number of Republicans in the last two years who have been fully on the side of Vladimir Putin and Russia, and this has put them in a really strange box politically. That box is very it's tighter now because there are two
sides in this world right now. There are countries like Iran and Russia and groups like Islamic State and Hamas. They're on one side of the column and the rest of the world's on the other side of the column. And they're a much larger faction in the Republican parties supporting Putin and Hamas right now than there are in the Democratic Party. And I find it really interesting how that inversion is going on in our culture and our political culture right now.
The question also is where does this go?
Right, Like, you have this Republican Party that's fractured, Is it two parties?
Is it no party? You have nihilis? Who have? You know?
Trump is going to be the nominee. It looks like that it's inevitable. There's going to be a reckoning, right, I mean, when does his reckoning happen?
Well, the political reckoning, I think is going to start for anybody who's not on board with the President's position right now, which is by the way, as far to the right as humanly imaginable on Hamas and those who are engaging in terrorism, and is also about sending one hundred million dollars of humanitarian aid to legitimate Palestinian relief
efforts right outside of their control. But you're also going to see if the hostage story continues to develop, and we don't know the terrain of it yet, and the fact that we don't hear anything about it means there's something bigger than we're hearing about. I don't want to sound like Alex Jones just now, but that's sort of my experience.
From what I've understood too the weeks.
In Jesus Christ.
The reason that we're not hearing so much about that is because there is actually something going on there, and people's lives are in jeopardy.
The political reckoning of this or the edge case and the Democratic Party right now, the Rashida ta Leaves and the small fraction. I mean, look, you could put these people around a table at a restaurant, but if you want to pro putin caucus in the Republican House, you'd have to get a dining hall.
You have to have a big room.
So the political reckoning of whether American voters want strength and stability over chaos and the spectacle of the Trumpian style foreign policy, they're going to answer with strength and stability every time.
We got breaking news here, which by Monday will be broken.
The cheese no longer stands alone Cheesebro, Cheesebro.
It's Chesbro, but we call him Cheesebro because we love.
Cheese and cheese.
I love cheese.
It's so good. So Cheesebro has taken the plea. Bro Jesse is like laughing to keep from crying.
About these people.
These people are so deeply in the shit that it is the It is one of the greatest proof cases of my political philosophy of everything Trump touches dies.
Here's the other part of it. They're all dangling.
Trump held them all out to dry, and these cases that that they're all fighting. They probably needed a couple hundred grand each to like get a mountain actual defense. But of course Trump had to repaint his plane and needs a new like Golden Bidet or mar Lago or something. And the idea that he left them hanging out to dry was was so on brand for Trump. You've got you know, Rudy shuffling around like selling cameo appearances now to try to cover his two million dollars of legal bills.
Of course this is what was going to happen. And of course these little bitches are gonna flip. Do you think Kim Cheeseburrow could do a minute in the joint? That guy would be bait on the first day. He'd be in the infirmary the second he got there. These are not strong people. They are not tough people.
Poor cheese brow. You've got Sydney Powell giving her.
Appearing now at the Leopard Lounge at the time in the room, it's stay shady, Sydney Poll.
One lap dance from her and your life will change.
For Jesus Christ, you know she's seventy years old.
Okay, she's sixty ye, I'm not agist.
Okay, well, but she can drink her diet doctor peppers in freedom because she's not she's not.
Working the pole, because easy, as.
A feminist, I'm going to cut you off right there. She's not working the pole, and we're out.
She's got legal bills today, we're out.
So use let the record show I did not laugh at any joke I followed.
She was working the pole.
Dave Wigel is a political reporter at Semaphore.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Dave, thank you going to be here.
Great to have you so talk to us about a campaign filing.
Finance Filing is FEC week. What did you.
Learn, Well, it was kind of following a pattern we've seen all year. Just voters donators are not as engaged in this race, the race for president, the House races as they've been the last few cycles. I think that's still interesting and there's not a one unifying reason why. Because yes, there people have a little bit less disposable income than they did maybe ten years ago, but comparable
to what they did four years ago. You have in the presidential race just Republicans who are not know from raising fairly little money, holding on to less than a lot of Democrats had this point four years ago. And in the House races, you have in the front line of the Republican conference, like the people who were the most jammed by what's happening right now with the speaker vote,
you have those people raising pretty good money. They're not really being outraised, but nobody's having these blockbuster five million dollar quarters that we've used to see, except for Senate Democrats are doing quite well. I think maybe if there's one theme here, it's that this transition we've seen over the last few years of college educated voters who might have been Republican are not very engaged before Trump, They're
very engaged. They're very amenable to throwing one hundred bucks to a Senate camp if they think that's the way to stop Donald Trump Mitch McConnel from taking over again.
Is this just like.
Pre election malaise or is this something larger.
In in a Republican race. I think it is. Malay's absolutely Replican presidential race. Donald Trump is winning, has been winning. Nobody has has lit a fighter under small donors as an alternative Trump, nobody has his draw to your grassroots Republican donor. Those people really were willed into existence by Donald Trump, and not just his twenty sixteen campaign, but really twenty twenty. He was the best fundraiser in Republican history. He has raised money and this was note at the time,
but then you confirmed it with the empty reports. You raised seventy million dollars in the days after his Georgia mugshot. Everything we've seen that seems to benefit Donald Trump with Republican primary voters shows up in these finance reports that it's the base that gives money. Dill sees this as Donald Trump primary to lose, that he was denied the presidency unfairly last time, and that anything that slows him down they need to come on and help them for
with these other cadets. So Nicki Haley raised a bit more money, but it's comparable really to what Andrew Yang raised at this point four years ago. And I'm not trying to diminish Yang or diminish her, just this is a candid who's gotten a good amount of media attention, is getting the kind of crowds, and I've been in some where Republican voters who really don't want Trump back or excited about her. It's done her pretty well, but nothing like the Biden alternatives did four years ago.
Same thing with DeSantis. I mean, DeSantis's numbers were much worse.
The campaign tried to get ahead out of them and spend that he raised a record breaking some They really had to search around for a way to hype about a little bit less than twelve million dollars. Because he raised twenty million dollars his first his first weeks in the race. He clearly has been fading, the report suggests. Yes, indeed,
he's fading. There's not a lot of vnors around the country who were so excited about him that they're kipping in to help him because they just think that this race is effectively decided already.
Yeah, it's interesting though he did raise a ton of money. This is common, you know, the excitement of the candidate doesn't match the candidate to actual you know, when you get them in the ring. But Nikki Haley sort of had the opposite. But it just was she just couldn't stand up against Trump.
Yes, and she's not trying to so. Hailey, I think has run the sort of campaign that usually, if not prevails last she has run a very careful campaign. A few of her key issues. She has the foreign policy experience, for you, an ambassador that she leans on again not trying to be too negative. But that led to her last week saying that she was trying to worry the
world about Hamasa's threat to Israel. And I saw her then said, I feel like a lot of people knew that Amas both the first Israel, but okay, we'll take it. She's not done a ton of media. That's risky.
She's quite good at doing.
Your Jake Tapper interview whatever, but she's not stuck her knock out as much. Her events have been pretty well controlled. She doesn't take questions from quarters after events, and she's impressed big donors who really frittered away the year thinking that Ron DeSantis rather was going to be the Trump alternative,
and it isn't. I mean, one thing you saw at Santa's fundraising too, is that not just a gap in what he raised from quarter to quarter that he raised less money, but he had a ton of supporters in the first quarter in the second who maxed out and they're done and they can't give to him unless he makes it to the general election. He also has been and this is a common trick, they've been raising money for the general election, which you just have to even keep it if you don't make it there. But it's
not you can't use it in the primary. And one thing we don't know yet because super PACs reporting on a different timeline, is he had through this transfer of wealth from his state pack to never back down the super Pac something that has been in the past illegal, but the FEC just doesn't care anymore. He had ondred million dollars in that pack that's been spent down to some extent.
We don't know how much.
One of the other things that was pretty amazing about DeSantis World was he spent an abnormal amount of money on private jets.
Right, Yeah, that showed up again. He cut back a little bit. I mean he was wasting money. He also has been using and for them need to report this the same way being using state resources to travel. I mean you'll see his answer in the road and he'll have farda police ieu control something that his campaign I shouldn't say his campaign as governor, he signed a law
protecting these records from Foyer. I mean, the only reason you can find out sometimes how much money was spent on his security paid for by taxpayers, is they'll get in a car crash and then we'll find out for the police who was with him. So he has been slightly more frugal. He's not been doing quite as many of these these flights. The problem is just the intake. He brought in less money than he needed. The lesson he was spending and none of the investments have paid off.
So their campaign, Remember, has this bifurcated structure, that is the DeSantis campaign running his travel, the basics of what he needs to do to get around the country, not really any advertising. The field work, like the offices, the volunteers, people going door to door, that's all the super pack. He was wasting money with the confidence that the super Pac was going to be funding the ground game. It still is, but there are mixed results so far from
that super Pac investment. Most notably they were organizing in Texas, which has a later primary, which won't matter unless he wins Iowa or comes close and they pull out of that. I mean, they were definitely blowing a lot of money on stuff that just didn't matter.
Yeah, it's super interesting, but at the end of the day, the chances of someone not being Donald Trump as the Republican nominees seemed pretty low.
Right.
Yeah, you're not seeing interest from small donors in replacing him, and you're not seeing in polling or in excitement from voters local officials idea that he should be replaced. The premis for a lot of these donors, small and big. Was we need somebody more electable than Donald Trump. Two things that benefited Trump. One is that polling has shown
he's doing fine. I mean, he's doing better than he did in head to head polling against Biden at this point, well not at this point, but in the general election twenty twenty.
Just is he winning.
That's hard to say, but he was down sometimes double digits in swing state polls and then he did much better on election day. If you're a Republican voter, you look at the current polling and says, okay, Biden is tied with Trump. Biden is one point down on one point up. I'm not worried about Trump. Trump can beat him. You also have Ron de Santis for everything he's done in his campaign, becoming really unpopular, just scanning as a right wing guy and people don't want to who swing
voters don't like, and he does worse. Mean, Dickie Hailey does a couple of points better, the Santa Suss a couple of points worse. If you're the kind of voter and donor who cares about that, it's just atch you're not in a panic to get rid of Trump. And this really mattered in twenty sixteen not enough to beat Trump,
but polling was really divergent. Polling would find from losing states by six seven points that if you ask voters about a Rubio Hillary race or a Casic Hillary race, that they were winning and there's just not the gap. Now you have the entire Republican apparatus saying that Trump is innocent, and you have polling saying that Trump and win.
So what's left if you want to beat the guy? Right?
Exactly?
So pull this back from me for a second, try to like make it make sense.
Does this mean.
That Trump is powerful in the party but trump Ism is not? Does it not scale? Is that sort of what you extrapolate from this, or does it mean that it's just Trump just has such a hold that nothing else matters.
I mean, is there more to pull from.
This, depending on you to find Trump is. I think it suggests that it is locked into the party. Stepping away from the fundraising. The most interesting fight happening this week among the other candidates has been Rhonda Santis saying he won't take any refugees from Gaza. No aid to Gaza, no aid to the Palestinians. Two things about that One no one was suggesting it, so it's not actually happening.
It's nothing to propose the refugee part of it. Two, everyone's agreed with him, and everyone has taken basically the position on both aid to Palestinians and on refugees that Donald Trump took in the twenty sixteen campaign. So the all parties moved along with him in significant ways. If you had this delinea the differences between Trump's alternatives and Trump, and you set aside electability, it's that Desantas says he
can do what Trump promises, but more efficiently. It's that Haley would defend and continue to fund Ukraine's defense and Trump would not. You have every candidate saying they would cut spending all the Trump says that too, in same.
Me he said at twenty sixteen. But there's not that many differences. Yeah, right.
Had this been a normal cycle and Desanta's not been a complete like you know, non end today when you got him on the stomp, he would have been the heir of trump Ism, and that has not happened. So has that not happened because trump Ism dies with Trump? Or has it not happened because DeSantis.
Was just so bad at this It's really the existential question this race. Could someone have beaten Trump? Did desantisis do a poor job? I lean more toward Trump having such a hammer lock on Republican voters that no one was in a position to beat him. I do think the defining moment, rarely on was the first indictment, Alvin
braggt indictment in New York. The response of every Republican candidate was to get ahead of it and condemned except Arissa Hutchinson, who is barely in the race, you know, locked out of the debates at this point, every other Republican condemned it. DeSantis actually, who wasn't running yet, offered him ambitsty in Florida Saint Jury and Florida, but he
wouldn't extradite and be or can take this. And I think Trump, who has a just a better political radar than this, I think DeSantis has a better radar for what conservatives care about. Trump has a better political radar period. Trump plain and Trump started to benefit from from the idea that he was so powerful that he was being
brought down legally. Because this is the meta argument about all these Trump indictments, is not even that he is innocent it's that he's innocent and the only way Democrats can beat him is by dragging him down with lawsuits. That's hard to unstick. Once you will become convinced that there's one candidate is being dragged down by the legal system because Democrats can't beat him fair and square, even
though they did that three years ago. Once the other guy's argument, it's like, well, I can also win and nobody hates me as much as they hate Trump. Well, maybe they don't hate you because they think you're a loser. This is a thing that's haunted the Santis, especially those polls came out just Trump and Democrats are in harmony on DeSantis, or they just kind of make fun of him as this gormalous charismalists drip and how many times do we elect to a drip of no charisma?
Not often. Maybe there's somebody in like the eighteen forties. I'm less familiar with it.
Millard Shillmore not the most charismatic, although he went on is out good point, but that I think has overwhelmed it any other arguments they can make about it. So, yes, it didn't help that Dysantis was pretty bad at this.
I mean the pulling.
I would I would pay attention to public and private was favorability of Trump, which was very high, hiring these other candidates, which dipped a little after the midterms, came right back and confidence that his electability and that just that didn't change. So what was going to happen. Who was going to come in and change that dynamic? If there was a candidate who was leading Joe Biden by
twenty points, could that change things? Perhaps none of them exists to know when that popular exists in American politics right now, So they never had that fight.
So now we have Trump has all these court appearances. It seems like he's using these court appearances, I mean not all of them, but he's certainly taking questions and speechifying, right he is after.
Each earing, So I don't know if he's taken questions, but he.
Certainly says yeah.
It's sort of interesting if you think about other politicians who are in legal jeopardy, like think about Menendez, right, there's no like, you know, grand standing afterwards. I mean, this is so it's a pretty counterintuitive thing to do.
As a politician.
Though as Trump, remember it doesn't matter, I mean counterintuitive. He just does whatever the fuck he wants. But do you think this works? I mean, do you think that this is sort of the you know, if you're Trump, you can just use this as a campaign rally.
Yes, he has been doing that.
You don't need to convince most Republican voters any further than what he did with was so objectionable. As the Republican voters are there several million people who used to be Republican who aren't anymore because of this stuff. There are they're just not voting in the primary. There's a very good piece by Natalie Allison and Lusa Koshinski in Politico this week that captured what a lot of us who are on the trail that's seen, which is that Trump does not have to campaign that much and his
opponents are out hustling him by just by default. They're showing up more than he is because he's not showing up that much. But it's not like previous cycles were like a and I was there with Pete Buddah Judge, where Peja Jesu was just endlessly in Iowa, going to every town, doing every county.
DeSantis has done some.
Of that to Mitch results, but he's the only one I think by the end of this primary, DeSantis, maybe Mike Pence, because he's put everything into Iowa, that'll be the only guys who do the ninety nine county Iowa tour. But beyond that, they're just not spending as much time as previous candidates did there.
So this flows from Trump. Trump does not need to be there.
He can have a press conference that gets just as much attention outside of courtroom.
What did you get that day?
If you organized rallies, flew your candidate out there, took a bunch of hands, took a bunch of photos, you got some caucus sign ups. Incrementally you're adding to it, But what earned me did you get?
Often? Zero off?
You're not getting any media pickup. You know, thank you for everyone who reads me. He reads blow of reporters every day. But for the average, the average voter, it's very clear they're bringing little attention to what these candidates are doing. And stepping back from all this, the thought a lot of these guys had is, well, one question you get asked is why are these guys run against Trump?
How can they win?
The answer that the campaigns would kind of say quietly but not broadcast, was well, we don't know what's going to happen if he's indicted, and if it looks if Republican voters look at this guy and think he's going to jail, will they be more up in minded the answer has been, or they won't. They will stick more to him more closely. So what's left? And once people tell you what their silver bullet is and then the silver bullet just pumps and flattens on the wall. Okay,
what do you have left? Like, what is the next plan for beating this guy? They don't have a convincing one, And I think you're still worth covering because the way that they're running their campaigns. But nobody has figured out a way to beat him. Nobody has figured out a way to excite small donors, which was something that Bernie Sanders could do previously, andre Yanne could do.
They're not doing it.
Nikki Haley and Rod DeSantis raised more than your average senate candidate does, and that's it.
The other candidates.
Really, we're kind of up there with the guy running for Senate Montana and how much the money they're raising. They have just not lit Republicans on fire around the country.
It's just such a crazy situation two seconds on RFK Junior.
RFK Junior was thought to be.
The sort of magic bullet against Biden and supported by Steve Bannon, and now it's possible that he may actually be the magic bullet against Trump.
Can you explain if.
You look at who's funded his campaign, especially his super pac, which is again doesn't have to report for a little while.
We're going to know more about the super back in January.
Frankly right, But there's a Harlan Crowe connection.
Yes, well around crow is a Cornell West. But when Kennedy got into the race, I think there are people who sincerely agree with him, and there are a lot of people who's cynically and Steve and I think both agree with him and cynically wanted to use him for this thought. This will be a problem for Joe Biden because he could lose these first two primary estates Iowa and New Hampshire. They're going to hold contests. He won't be on the ballot. It would be embarrassing to him
if Kennedy pulls this. For a number of reasons, Kennedy and his campaign convince themselves that they were not dealing ground because the primary was rigged. They had this gambit, they left the party, and that was just less knowable. A gadfly primary opponent making forcing Biden to embarrass himself in an early state was one thing Independent Canada as an X factor and in polling. It's so I've seen all sorts of pulling on this. I've seen nothing that
says that Kennedy disproportionately pulls from Biden. I have seen stuff that says it's about even and stuff that he pulls disproportionately from Trumps. He's very attractive relatively to voters under thirty five, who by every measure, just don't like politics, don't trust politicians. That is a cohort that was more interested voting for Trump or Martinkey voted for Kennedy down.
So you've seen in the last week it's not definitive.
Last two weeks since he announced, Kennedy did one Fox and for his interview, and he had a very hostile Sean Handy interview, and he kind of disappeared from conservative media. He has not had the same pickup in conservative media that he used to. I think there's several reasons for that, but it's also if it was just a news value news judgment thing.
Kennedy is very pro Israel.
Kennedy could be your guest attacking the left for not being part of enough of Israel's government. He's not, He's just fallen off the map a little bit. I think that is to tell that conservatives say this X factor at the moment is not helpful because Trump could win one on one against Biden.
What is the point of throwing uncertainty into this mix?
So interesting? Thank you so much, Dave. Really super fascinating.
Oh it was awesome. Thank you for talking with me.
Nick Corusantini covers domestic politics.
For The New York Times. Welcome too Fast.
Politics, Nick, Thanks for having me. So you wrote this piece about Mississippi. It's funny because as the first person to talk to us about Mississippi was James Carmel, who said, you know, don't sleep on Mississippi. This was maybe six months ago. So when I saw your ps, he didn't explain to me the very interesting underlying state legislatives struggle that is.
Going on behind the scenes. And I read your piece and I still don't.
Completely understand the interesting legislative struggles that are going on behind the scenes in Mississippi. So can you explain to us what is going on in Mississippi.
Absolutely, we'll take a step back, We'll go all the way to eighteen ninety. So in eighteen ninety, at a constitutional convention by Mississippi Jim Crow era law was created literally with the phrase to secure the state of Mississippi
white supremacy. And what they did, wow, was for any statewide elected official at the state level, so that's your governors and your attorney's general, you had to not only win the popular vote, but you had to win the majority of the vote in the one hundred and twenty twenty two state legislative districts for the state House. So
it's basically an electoral college built for state elections within Mississippi. Now, the way that racial shorting has happened in Mississippi is, you know, black populations were much more densely populated into single districts. So by creating this electoral college aesque system, it drastically weakened the power of black voters in Mississippi. Now that law was on the books until twenty twenty.
So this is going to be the first governor's race in Mississippi history where that law will no longer be on the books, so it's just a normal popular vote election in Mississippi.
So how did that law affect elections?
So it's kind of tough to say, just due to you know, kind of how a Mississippi is a deeply read state. B you don't really know the kind of psychological impact that has over decades on certain communities where you feel like you're putting in all the effort to turn out the vote, your community comes out to vote and you're still getting be by fifteen to twenty percent. So it's kind of hard to say. There have been close elections. You know, Jim Hood only lost by I
think it was like six percent. He was a Democratic nominee a few years ago. So there have been close elections for governor and Mississippi recently, but it's tough to tell exactly how that has come into play, you down to say like a precinct or district or anything like that.
Right, So this will be the first election without that exactly.
And this is a very interesting election.
We have a uniquely unpopular Republican incumbent in Tate Reed, Yes, who's been plagued vice scandals.
I know there have been a lot of Tate reed scandals, but give us the TLDR on like your favor two. I know you're not on the opinion side. So two of them that you know of.
One involves this kind of spiraling scandal with Brett farb the former NFL quarterback, and basically taking money from welfare institutions and other kind of social safety at things within Mississippi and giving it to a pet project of Brett Farven his wife. Not one hundred percent positive on the
specifics of what it went to. I've heard it was a volleyball court, or it was some sports or athletic facility, but basically it was taking from Mississippi's very strapped welfare apparatus and moving it to places that wasn't necessary.
It was like crony capitalism.
Yeah, exactly.
And so you layer in a you know, famous face who you know, got a lot of media attention brought on ESPN and everything to cover the Brett fav angle. So this scandal's very well known. When you couple that with a very very unpopular policy stance Tate Reeves has taken, which is against medicaid expansion kind of solely on his you know, personal political beliefs that it's the wrong policy. This is exceptionally popular in poorer states, especially in Mississippi.
It polls at like seventy five twenty five that was in favor of expansion. So he's already angered a lot of voters on that policy. And then you bring in this scandal, which is one of a few that have kind of, you know, really tarnished his first few years here, and you have a uniquely unpopular incumbent that, despite this being a deeply read state, you know, could be in trouble.
Then as a challenger emerges, it's Brandon Presley, who's from the northeastern part of the state, which used to be a kind of traditional moderate Democrat stronghold that's solely eroded as the state's scotten better. So he's an interesting Democrat from that area. And he's also Elvis Presley's second cousin, so instantly there's some name identification.
He's a big celebrity, but.
He's an experienced politician. You know, he's been running for the Public Service Commission and serving on it for years. He's not necessarily raw by any means. He's a build on the stump, knows how to campaign, so Reeves drew a pretty tough challenger at a point where he's at, you know, maybe his most vulnerable politically. And then layered on top of that are these changes in how the
state elects its governor. In a state with the biggest black voting age population in the entire country, it's about forty percent of the state, you know, that could be newly energized or at least feel you know, a little bit more free, and then the vote has more power than it used to with these new rules.
Yeah, it is technically right, So white non Hispanics in Mississippi are about fifty six percent of the state, right, so it really is a state where the black vote can actually, if enfranchised, if able to vote, can really decide their representation. And to think about the people that these Southern states have sent to the Senate and to Congress, they have not been people who really were standing up for black voters.
No at allowed part that's also just due to the extreme dreamandering in a lot of these Southern states, right like the only Mississippi, despite having such a large black lining age population, only has one black representative in Benny Thompson, who also came out very early, which can done recently and endorsed Presley like Bright when his campaign was starting.
But there is an interesting thing that Charles Taylor, who's the director of the local chapter of the end of ACP in Mississippi, told me, which is that despite at the state level and congressional level not having significant representation in terms of black elected officials, Mississippi actually has a very high number, if not the highest number of total black elected officials in the country. And that includes you know, town councils, school boards, district attorneys, a lot of local races.
There is actually a lot of black elected officials in those positions in Mississippi. Charles said that it was about twelve to fifteen percent of the national number of black elected officials come from Mississippi, which is just one percent of the national population. So there is this, you know, pretty significant number of local black elected officials that I think people like Charles Taylor and then some Democrats are also hoping, you know, it's a sign that there is
this strength there. And when you remove the Jim Crow era burdens of this fall electoral college thing, you might actually be surprised by how the how the vote turns out.
It's so strange because it's like, if you think about how these black voters have really had their vote stolen from them for such a long time. So what we're seeing in Virginia as a certain amount of like hanky panky with the voter rolls not completely.
To be shocked by.
I guess there is a real anxiety at least on my part. These Republicans tend to really fight anything. I mean, you have Republican state parties in Alabama fighting the Supreme Court. I mean, you know, these people do not go quietly. So is there some worry on the state level that maybe Tate Reeves will do whatever is necessary to stay in office.
I haven't heard any kind of January sixth level fears that, so I would just say I didn't lose and you know, refuse to leave. But to your point about, you know, consistently fighting voting access, there has been a pretty significant change that's put a significant amount of black voters kind of in limbo right now. And that's a few years ago. Mississippi had, back to that eighteen ninety convention, one of the most strident bands of formally convicted felons regaining their rights.
They were automatically lost their rights for life, and so that was overturned by the Fifth Circuit, and so that would have given about one in six black adults in Mississippi.
They're voting rights back.
Now Mississippi instantly appealed, sued, and the initial decision was vacated, and now it's on appeal.
So it's completely hung up in limbo.
A lot of voting rights groups and black leaders in the state, you know, are kind of not sure exactly what voters should do. So their guidance has just been like, you know, don't test the system, don't go get arrested. So that's certainly something that could have a chilling effect. We haven't seen any evidence of the kind of more recent playbook of conservative groups looking under the banner of election integrity for fraud or things like that yet, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.
I just you know, haven't personally seen.
I mean, it's just very complicated and all these state laws are different depending on the state. The phenomenon that I think is pretty interesting that I'm always sort of struck by is there are a lot of these red states that end.
Up electing blue governors.
Right, we just had someone on talking about how unfortunately John Bell Edwards was term limit but this is actually kind of not a completely unusual phenomenon.
Will you talk about that for a minute.
Yeah, there's numerous examples of this kind of you know, across the South. Right now, you have Andy Basheer, who's up for re election in Kentucky, that's as deep a red state as you can get. You have a democratic governor in charge. Their same holds true in Kansas, one of the red estates that there's a democratic governor there, And it varies, as you were saying earlier, on the
state by state basis as to the reason. I think one of the reasons that John Bell Edwards was able to remain so popular was he was a Democrat, but he was also very pro gun, pro Second Amendment, you know, fought any attempts to restrict it. What sets Brandon Pressley apart right now for national Democrats is he's pro life and is in favor I guess of the state's current
you know, abortion laws. So a lot of these blue governors, you know, have found tailored messages different from national Democratic platforms, that appeal to the voters in their state. And then it often comes down to more pragmatic local issues, and I think the biggest one in Mississippi right now is what we're just talking about with Medicaid expansion. The biggest concern amongst all voters is Medicaid expansion, and among so many black voters in the rural South is rural hospital access.
So if you have a governor who's not talking about that and not necessarily doing as much at least service level that they can see to address it, and you have this candidate who's coming on and saying I will bring back you know, two one hundred and fifty million instantly, we can address the royal hospital crisis. I'm going to keep asking for more. The parties start to fade away and the instant needs of a state or of a voter takeover. And you've seen that, and you know select states.
There also has been you know, somewhat of a democratic resurgence across the South. You know, Georgia, I think is the is the first and most specific example, but there have been small gains felt I think kind of across the South. You know, a lot of leaders in Mississippi don't feel like they're nearly at Georgia's level. Right, there's a lot of other things beyond just simply getting a
black voting its population engaged. You had a bunch of wealthier, college educated white people voting moving into Atlanta and Georgia, some crossover libertarian votes, things like that that haven't happened in Mississippi. But they still feel like it's the long path, right, and so this could be the start of that, or they feel like they could be Georgia, you know, ten years from now, that kind of.
Thing, right.
I have to say, like, I was completely shocked that Georgia went before North Carolina, where North Carolina seemed like it would be quicker, kind of bluining. So I just want to ask you, sort of for our listeners, what does it sound like sort of your takeaway is from the story in Mississippi? I mean, what would need to happen for Presley to become governor?
So Pressley as he campaigns, he talks about this broad coalition of black Minsipiens, White Misissippians, Republicans, Democrats, independence, everyone, and for him to win, he does truly need to
build that coalition. As we said earlier, it's a state with the highest black voting edge population, but that's still not a majority by any means, So he'll need to pull away some moderate Republicans, some independence, maybe trying to rebuild those northeast part of the state Democrats, and build this coalition.
To be Tate Reeves.
And it seems like, you know, the way he does that is focusing on an issue that is so sailing among the voters.
Have to keep coming back to it. But it's that medicaid expansion.
Again.
If he were to have a chance, it would mean that he really connected on that issue and was able to kind of build this coalition that's necessary to win there, because while Georgia might seem purely purple, Mississippi is still
purely red. So it would have to be an upset where you do build a surprising keep using the word coalition, but you do build as a coalition of voters that will include, in fact, some Republicans who are just either furious about the scandals, furious about medicaid, or some other issue.
Nick, thank you so much for joining us. Super interesting. We will be watching Mississippi.
Thanks for remy a moment, Rick Wilson.
My great moment of fuckery this week.
Ah yes, my moment of fuckery is Dean fucking Phillips. Dean Phillips is a suicide bomber who is going to primary President Joseph Robinette Biden. He is the Pat Buchanan of this cycle. Anybody that would advise him to get into this race is the same kind of person that would have selected Sarah Palin as a vice president.
Wait, who could you mean?
I'm not saying a damn thing right now, but I will soon. This is a spectacularly moronic, amoral, stupid, politically corrosive, and harmful decision by a bunch of people who are sniffing Dean Phillips asks for money. Because certain consultants in the world have a gift for whiffing around the backsides of candidates who have a lot of money and giant egos, and Dean Phillips has both. They're going to put this guy in the race. They're going to try to make
him into a New Hampshire story. And so he got twenty four percent or whatever it turns out to be in New Hampshire, it means Biden should step down.
It ain't gonna happen. People.
Dean Phillips is Look, they failed to get JFK Junior and the Democratic ticket and this is their.
Next This is the dollar store. Excuse me.
JFK Junior is, of course very busy right now, secretly run in the country.
That's right.
I'm working with the military. Of course, he is RFK Junior. But this is like the dollar store RFK Junior.
RFK Junior without the steroids, r f.
K Junior without the without the dulcet tones and the HGH. Right.
But this guy is he's my moment of fuckery this week. There's a bunch of stories that are broken now about the people around him. I'm going the same about it as it develops. But i will tell you one thing. This guy can do nothing but hurt Joe Biden. All he's gonna do is get the Republicans talking points and say see even Democrat Dean Phillips says that Joe Biden's too old to be president, because that's their whole strategy.
By the way, they're gonna say, Joe Biden's a nice old man, but he needs a gold watch and a retirement plan, and we're going to be the young, vital voice of America. Let me tell you some this guy when it's over. I promise you this, personally and politically, this guy he's going to want to be in the witness protection program with when people are done with him,
because it is deeply, deeply destructive. The only thing that's going to lead to is Pat Buchanan style division inside the Democratic Party, and they know it.
But who even is a Dean Phillips candidacy for besides someone who needs to buy a boat?
Who picks Sarah Palin.
Well, he's a green room candidate and people in the media world will love to book him because it's like more red meat and more more spectacle. But he has no predicate for running other than the fact that he's not eighty years old. That's his entire argument for election. I'm not eighty. This is a backbencher. He's never set the world on fire in any way politically or in
terms of ideas. I don't think he particularly has any ideas other than his name is Dean Phillips, and he's very wealthy and he wants to run for office.
But he does love ice cream, and the ven diagram of Democrats who love ice cream who don't love Joe Biden is very small, and so for that Dean Phillips is our moment of fuckeray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in 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.