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 Governor Greg Abbott and did water break requirements for construction workers in a heat wave? We have a star studded lineup for today's show. Mother Jones's David Korn stops by to talk to us about Noah Labels and all of their fuckery and their hope to
throw the twenty twenty four election to Trump. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post Katherine Rampell about all of the Republican fuckery towards the irs. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List fan favorite the LinkedIn Projects, Rick Wilson. We have the band back together.
Welcome back, Rick Wilson.
I am back and glad to be here.
We're delighted to have you, always so much fun and also, more importantly than any of that, you are today he Trump's.
Target once again. I am Donald Trum's targets. We're running some ads in Bedminster, one basically calling him a spy because he's violated the Espionage Ack like famous spies in American history. And the second head is called Rats, where we're basically just doing what we do. Is yet anytime Donald Trump is disrupted and distracted, it's good for America. So the second head is our famous whispers girl saying, Donald, the rats are all around you. They're selling you out
because we know how paranoid he is. So yeah, he's raging on truth social this morning, his dollar store social media platform. It's a good day. Anytime Donald Trump threatens me, it's a good day.
Let's talk about this for a second. Where is Donald Trump right now?
He is in Bedminster, New Jersey right now at his mid tier golf club.
But I read the Times newsletter this morning, really smart, and it talked about how even though this polling is very good for Donald winning, that he's very likely to win the nomination. You really can see in this cracks of like some people getting their sort of heads back. Do you agree with that? What do you think?
Look in twenty twenty at the Lincoln Project, we modeled three to eight percent of Republican voters in nine key states. Okay, we determined those people were persuadable, and we got five point eighty five percent of those votes. We did really well in our in our model. Little surprise, how well it went, because you know, Republicans were all coming home at the end to Trump. Our model has become much more sophisticated and granular in the intervening years, and now
the model is like between seven and eleven percent. Now that's not a ton of people, but it's decisive in a closely divided nation and in the electoral college states where it's going to turn on those states that have very very competitive races. So we believe that several things caused that expansion. One is Dobbs, which absolutely peeled off Republican women like nothing else I've ever seen.
Say that again, I want you to talk about abortion, because that's something where I've always, always, always always been right, and I feel that everyone has not listened to me. Thank you.
Well, here here's the thing. Between twenty and twenty five percent of Republican women are either mildly or somewhat or are fully pro choice okay, And it's mostly mildly pro choice okay, like no third trimester blah blah blah blah blah. About fifteen to eighteen percent of Republican men are somewhat, are mildly or somewhat or fully pro choice, Okay, so when Dobbs hit, it was like a nuclear bomb going off because the dog caught the car. And now they've
recognized that a part of the party coalition. They've always been sort of like, yeah, we got to have those guys in the coalition, but we don't love them. The evangelical crazies, right are going to look at Dobbs and say, well, now we can set up snitch programs so women get
reported for having abortions. So the side that overshoots on abortion is the side that loses, right, the side that overshoots on the issue, and the Republicans at this in this part of our history are overshooting it by many, many miles, right right, all right, Now, this should not be interpreted as as an excuse for Democrats not to message on it correctly.
Right, But that's what you're seeing.
The Kansas model prove the case, and our current survey work is proving the case that it's not abortion per se that's changed that number. It's the sense of wild government overreach and the snitch programs and the six week abortion bans. I mean, the six week abortion ban is defund the police for Republicans.
Right right, right, Oh, I love that.
It's like a narrow part of the party thinks that's the greatest thing ever. But most people who hear it go, what the fuck are you talking about?
I just want to get into this for one second.
One of the reasons why it seems like Republicans right now, and again it's not all Republicans. I think the base is ry much with him, but the quote unquote thought leaders, the National Review crowd, right, the people who've read a book. Those guys are freaking out because they know he doesn't have the numbers, and that's why they're trying to get third party candidates running.
Well that and look, the National Review guys in particular, they are like the worst desantist stands you've ever seen. I'm aware they are obsessed with Rond de Santas. I think his ship doesn't stink. That he's the tallest, handsomest man in the room.
Five point nine is the new six to one, right, and.
That he's that he's brilliant and ready to lead them boldly into the future. Now that, of course, has collided with two realities. One, he's a bad candidate. And I say that objectively as somebody who's been in politics for thirty five plus years, and they've seeing candidates good, bad, and indifferent. He is on the lowest quartile of candidate performance. He's not charismatic, I'm not being I'm not being partisan.
I'm not gaming the Republican primary anyway. I could say he's not a good candidate.
He's Ted Cruz without the charm.
He's Ted Cruz without the charm. He's Jeb Bush without the smoldering sensuality.
Let the record show I laughed at Jeb Bush without the smoldering sexuality, but I didn't want to because I see Jeb Bush joke is low like Ted Cruz. Okay, but Jeb Bush, like please clap, the man doesn't even exist anymore.
He's not Josh Hawley without the thick cloud of testosterone musk around him.
Oh Jesus Christ, we're opening the door to a lot of Problemsdcast. That's right, But I think that's a good point so the national but you're seeing I mean, I think this like anxiety that the RFK Junior prop.
Up Steve Bannon's monkey and.
The Twitter bros. You know, Jason Killococcus or whatever is now spent three hours with RFK Junior and was like, why won't Biden give me three hours? Why it's a mystery. Why will the random guy who has nothing to do give me three hours but not the president of the United States. Math is hard when you're a tech bro.
Math is very hard when you're David Sacks or Jason Calcanus or any of the.
Other Love that David Sacks pilot.
Fish swimming around Elon Musk's shark like anus.
I have to tell you that crew. Now Rick is laughing at his own joke. Is the ability to crack oneself up is something I've never had personally, but David Sacks those crew have.
They're trying to.
Get famous off of Elon Musk having purchased Twitter. God bless them. I mean, that's the other thing is they hate the media and they hate celebrities.
They don't hate the media and they don't hate celebrity.
They want to be the media.
They desperately want to be in the media. They desperately want to be celebrities. Listen, let me say something. If if MSNBC called it David Sacks and said you were going to offer you a contributorship, he'd be on that so fucking fast. So yeah, he'd be on that speed of fucking heat.
He'd be wearing his Montclair hat on MSNBC.
Right there you go, Yes, no question. Those guys.
They just think that now that their buddy bought Twitter, they're going to be able to take over the media ecosystem, and God bless them.
I mean, you know, I don't know about you, Molly, but Twitter is insufferable right now.
Well, I mean he just made it very hard to use. Yeah, yes, it's not as hard to use if you're Elon because you have somebody who does it for you. But for the rest of us we have to use her own Twitter. It's very hard to use now.
No, But I mean I think the thing that they did deliberately was added this ability for the fucking troll armies to just take over the fyp you know, take over your feed and one of these boggacy that he's like, you were afraid of our intellectual power. I'm like, no, dude, trust me on this one. That is the least of my lories. I'm afraid you're going to continue to post memes of Hillary Clinton dressed as the Devil.
But let's just talk about intellectual power, because we're going all over the place here, But this is pretty great. Maria Barbaroma, you may have remembered her as one time mattering the money. Honey had James Comer on her show, and James Comer said that people who watch MSNBC have a very low IQ.
Yeah, James Comer has the intellectual horsepower of a fucking go kart.
I thought I would miss Louis Gohmert.
Exactly where he is.
He's dumb even on the Gomert scale, and the Gomert scale is widely used by scientists to measure the progress of I mean, he is slow.
Yes, the Gombert scale used to measure both teeth and intellect.
You know, some molly, some focal never lose a toe, but then again some focal. He's Comer Slackjohn Yokel.
I'm telling you Comer is an incredible politician. I am delighted to see him. My favorite thing that happened. And there were two incredible Republican politics stories that we did not see because they were drowned out by Trump's.
Federal indictment is second indictment.
One was Republicans fighting with each other over a gas stove messaging bill incredible stuff, and the other was right around the time of the federal indictment Truck Brasley came out and said they were tapes of Hunter Biden. Right, do you remember this?
I did.
There were a Hunter of Biden tapes.
And more recently we discovered that the Hunter Biden tapes may or may not exist.
And may or may not be real.
Well, they may they may not even be fake.
They may just not be.
Anything right, they may not exist at all at all. But here's the thing. They live in a separate universe and so on Oaan and Fox and every other goddamn place in the world. They're being fed a steady diet of bullshit every day. They're being told that this isn't really Donald Trump criming. The real criminals are the Biden family who have taken fifty jillion bazillion dollars in China. China.
China paid them a lot of money. Why did China pay them money for Barisma?
Yeah, well, of course, and obviously that China was trying to help Zelenski.
Right Zelensky. It all comes back to Zelenski.
The conspiracies always become more baroque with time.
I want to point out another thing that happened this week, which was a little bit below the radar because we have to now focus on the things that are that the other incredibly fucked up things Republicans have been doing. I want to talk to you about this Don Junior email scandal. If this were Chelsea Clinton, we would be talking about this every fucking day.
If Chelsea Clinton had said the things in an email that Don Junior is now proven to have said in an email that was published, that there would be a batshit never ending Fox Memories day, there would be House Oversight Committee hearings for a billion years. It would not, in any way ever ever stop. So the madness of these things.
Is like efensive emails among businessmen. Donald Trump Junior spark fight in hedge fund case. One of the things that Donald Trump Junior. You'll remember Donald Trump Junior.
As friend of the Jews, so I've been told.
So I've been told because his sister married a Jew, so obviously he cannot be anti Semitic. We all know this because that's how it works, except that in this he says we're having Jews over, it'll be kosher.
Oh my god, you know, almost like don't like punching Don Junior because he's so obviously impaired from a staggering, staggering set of pharmaceutical challenges that that it's like.
In this way, he is like everyone else I grew up with.
Continue It's like shooting fish in a barrel. And he's also just not terribly bright.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I just find the guy. I find the guy just pathetic. I mean, he's just he just makes me sad sometimes watching him, because you know, he's down there in Jupiter, Florida, and his buddy Skeeter just just came up through the gated community to check in. And the guy at the the guy at the gates like ice skate, and Skeeter's like, man, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta a door dash for don for Donny Junior man, and and the they wink and Skeeter drive in. He sort of stands at the
door for a minute. They have that awkward transaction.
This is we've hit the Rick Wilson does fiction part of the podcast.
Listen. I like a little fiction now and then I never forget that, never forget that piece that we did about Hillary again Jared Murder.
So let's just talk about this so that Republicans in disarray. Trump's federal indictment. The Justice Department completely fought themselves, rolled the dice Scott, Judge, Eileen Maga.
Cannon, and the other thing. I a piece about this yesterday in Resolute Square. People are underestimating why a suthford A jury is trouble. It's not just that there are a lot of Magas down there. And by the way, they're smart enough to play the game down there. They're like sophisticated enough to play the game. Well, no, I am a Republican, but I'm not a crazy person. The chance of getting somebody who will blow up the whole
jury pool easy, It's high. And the other thing is people done in Miami, in the South part of Florida. Folks from outside this world don't understand. People from Moscow come to Miami and go, Wow, this place is fucking corrupt. People from Mogadishu go you know, the rule of law really applies better back home than it does here. People in Miami do not have the same standard of the rule of law that the rest of the country does. They are tolerant of corruption. It is part of the
ecosystem down there. God love it. I love Miami, like like nothing, you.
Know, right, you're gonna have a not corruptury seems like a zero.
Right, the idea that this people are gonna go. Yes, so he had some documents in boxes? What the fuck? Man? Oh yeah, let's go, let's go. Come on, I'm done right.
We've always had documents in boxes.
I mean that was the defense that you Hewitt made like two hours after the thing came out. As serious people are telling us that there's a serious case. You know, we have serious lawyers saying this and that, and Hewett goes he didn't even try to sell them.
I am stunned at a level.
Are you stunned? I'm not stunned.
The fucking this is what they do.
No, No, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'm stunned that anybody doesn't expect, now the Republican machine to rally around the most absurd possible defenses. One of my favorite civil wars the last few days Andy McCarthy and Mark Levin fighting over Trump the amazing amazing. Like Andy McCarthy, a relatively serious lawyer, says, you know, Trump doesn't have a defense. It's done, and you know, so the civil war inside the Republican Party over Trump's defenses and how
to defend him is fascinating. And again that there is that sort of gentry conservative media at National Review, et cetera. They hate Trump aesthetically, they don't like Trump aesthetically, it's.
Right, but they want to win. They'd rather win than lose.
That's right, that's right. And so what will happen if Trump is acquitted in this case, or if DJ pulls the plug because it gets too close to the election, What will happen at that point is that every one of them will bend the knee, right.
All right, which we saw this happen already National.
Review, Dan and Rich and all the rest of them.
Well, baseball Crank go along with it.
Yeah, oh that's Dan, Yeah he'll go along.
Yeah, oh then that's Basebook. I didn't even know what baseball Crank's name was.
Yeah, every single one of them will. And I'll give you exactly what it will be. While we have reservations about Trump's character and behavior, Joe Biden is a communist, lesbian, Marxist, wickan child predator.
If only except for child predator, that's some good.
Who is also senile. In this case, we must protect America and hope that Trump has learned his lesson. And all of them, including Chris Christy and Susan Collins, they'll say, well, while I hesitate to vote for Trump, if I vote for Biden, America will go full communist and he'll seize the means of production and the krulax will be killed in the fields. It's just that fucking crazy.
David Corn is the DC Bureau chief of Mother Jones and author of American Psychotis.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, David Corn.
Good to be here, Always delighted to have you.
I'll try to keep up with the fast speed.
Yeah, don't know. Cursing, David Corn, talk to me about what's going on.
Just t to our universe.
In the universe it is Kevin McCarthy fundraising off Donald J.
Trump discuss I really thought at some point in time that we would get a break from the last seven years of craziness.
Right.
I've been covering politics for decades. I don't want to say how many decades, and it wasn't always like this, young people out there. There used to be times when the news cycle, well you didn't have to pay attention to it. Things would come and go. You know, people might be wrong, but they weren't crazy wrong. And the amount of crazy happened intimidually. But now it's turned into a fire hose with an endless supply of crazy water.
And every day, you know, if you're covering this, you could literally have a dozen or two things to ride about. Talk about mastic eight. It's just nuts. And of course when you have these spasms like the Trump indictment, it only puts everything from you know, from a level of nine to eleven or even higher. And so one of the small little things that popped up in the last couple of days in this post Trump felony indictment period is that Kevin McCarthy. And you know, we can laugh
about Kevin McCarthy. We saw how he barely became speaker and how he's become completely a toady for Trump after criticizing him following January sixth. Think about it, this guy is second in line to be commander in chief. You would think that that would make him act somewhat responsibly at least some of the time, not all the time, but some of the time. Yet we see little evidence of that. You know, when after the indictment. A reporter caught up to him and said, well, what do you
think of this? And he goes, bathroom doors have locks.
Yeah, that was amazing that bathroom doors are somehow safer than Biden's garage. Because but again, I think it's important to mention Biden returned the documents, Pence returned the documents, and Donald Trump told his lawyers to lie about the documents.
Listen, you know, having covered the government for years, you're going to find in a mess of documents in the White House or any place else, the occasional inadvertent classified document or something else misplaced. And the whole key thing is when that happens, you give it back. It's very very simple, you give it back. And that's what Trump
didn't do. But then you know, not only was McCarthy being absolutely absurd justifying what Trump was doing holding classified material in a bathroom with a chandelier, we must add it was athom chandelier. Chandeliers in your bathrooms, but I certainly don't, and I think most Americans don't. Most American bathrooms are un chandeliered. But in addition to all that, he sends out a fundraising email calling Tuesday the day of Trump's arrangement one of the darkest days in US history.
This is Trump's federal arrangement, not Trump's state level arrangement.
Yeah, the federal arrangment Tuesday, and McCarthy's out there calling it the darkest day in the United States history and repeats all these lies that Trump has been telling and the Trump crowd has been telling, saying that Biden has capped classified information for decades, not true, not decades, and that this is a persecution and an unfair prosecution, and that it was Biden who indicted Trump, not twenty four members.
Or however many there were, of a.
Grand jury of civilian Florida's of Floridians. So you know, he's out there protecting Trump with absurd defenses. He's out raising money off this, and it really shows that the whole Trump thing here for the Republican establishment at least, is based on money. It's really really based a lot on money. What happened after January sixth when Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy both slammed Trump for inciting the riot and being responsible for it, That's what Kevin McCarthy said.
Then within weeks they both turned and had nothing to say about it. Kevin McCarthy ran down Tomorrow Lago and posed,
grinning with Trump, I'm your guy. He bent the knee was because they realized that the base, the Republican base, was sticking with Trump, and if they'd done Trump, Trump would tell the base not to vote for establishment Republicans rhinos, but probably even more importantly, would tell the base, don't send them any money, not to the Republican Actional Committee, not to the republic Senatorial Campaign Committee, not to Mitch mcconnoll Mark, to Kevin McCarthy, not to the Republican Creational
Campaign Committee, all these things. And while they get a lot of money from corporate interests and packs and all that, they get tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars from these small donor Republicans who get twenty emails a day various Republican causes, and they are fully in the pocket of Trump. They respond to all these lies that he puts out their rubs. I call them troops Trump roots,
and they could not afford to lose these people. And now McCarthy is out there exploiting them and pushing disinformation to grind as many bucks out of them as he can, while Trump is doing the same thing. Haven't raised over seven million dollars since the indictment news broke last week.
So here's McCarthy fundraising on Trump. Two questions, Does Trump mind because historically we've seen that he doesn't like this, And then also, right, that's his money, Right, it's my money.
I think this is a question of a rising tide lifting all boats. Trump is, you know, scoring a lot of money at this point in time. He doesn't mine all these Republican entities raising money off the indictment as long as they're selling the same bogus narrative that Trump is being persecuted. This is the worst thing that's ever happened in American history, forgets slavery, and so they're all
singing from that page. I think that's fine by him because a lot of other Republicans and Republican causes and right wing groups, I mean, they're all, you know, those the fish that sort of attached themselves to Wales, you know, and or eat this. You know, this s gum off what I forget and we can listeners, here's your homework assignment.
How do Google you know?
I think it begins to let it always something out. Anyway, all these other Republican and writing groups, that's what they are. They're parasites. They're you know, Trump's a big whale getting all the money from the base, and they're they're sweeping up the crumbs and the stuff that he doesn't quite collect. And that is the Republican bio ecosystem.
So here's a question for you. You have a guy called Asa Hutchinson. He is trying to run. You have a guy called Asa Hutchinson. He was the governor of Arkansas. He is trying to run as a non corrupt Republican. It's a quite a narrow lane. He shares it with a very corrupt but also anti Trump but also worked in the Trump administration, Republican by the name of Chris Bridgegate. Christie.
I want to ask you, as Hutchinson asked the RNC to make part of the pledge b that if the candidate gets indicted criminal A back up.
A second, right now, the Republicans have a pledge. You have to pledge. If you're running in the Republican primary and want to be in the debates, you have to pledge your support. Whoever the candidate will be at the end of the day. And a sashin on this call with the RNC said, what can we amend that to say, you don't have to support the candidate if they are convicted of a crime.
And they all said, the RNC on this call, no.
Right, because that's our guy. Is that the saddest thing you've ever heard? Or have you heard sadder things?
I'm sure I can think of sadder things. I mean, it's a sad candidacy. Face Utchinson, I mean, the whole who is it?
What's his name?
One of the writers for the National.
Review baseball crank. That's the only one that exists. The other ones aren't real.
Christopher Cook, the one with a British accent who always sounds reasonable because he has a British accent. I think I'm getting his name. Right after the indictment he put out, the peony federal indictment, he put out a tweet saying, aren't you people sick of this? Isn't it time to move on? Shouldn't be talking about policies that make America better? Conservative ideals that will bring about a renaissance in this country?
Hilarious?
And I'm the oh lad, I think maybe it's Charles.
I feel so sorry for you. You are so deluded if you don't understand what's happened to the Republican Party and the larger conservative movement. These people don't care about such things of which Asa Hutchinson speaks and the National Review rites. They just don't. They want Trump. I mean when he said I could shoot some on Fifth Avenue and it's still well for me. I mean, they want someone who will shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. That's what they're looking for.
They're looking for someone who lies and cheats and steals, as long as it's to own the Libs, and as long as that person mirrors their sense of grievance and resentment, whether it's economic resentment, are racist resentment, or cultural resentment. They don't care that he promised the best healthcare system ever. But if he's going to get out there and slam transgender rights and go on about the deep state, that's what they want. They don't want a guy who will
deliver policy wins for them. Infrastructure Week. They don't care about Infrastructure Week. They don't care if their towns and cities are getting more jobs because of government policy. That's not what they want and their tribal leader and the American president. So it's kind of sad for me to watch these principal Republican policy See minded people believe that they can talk sense to the Republican base and the politicians that serve it.
So let's talk about no labels.
No labels.
They have a label, it's called Republican.
There's so much that they've done the last couple of weeks that's mind blowing. And I had a big scoop that went viral on Twitter the other day that showed.
Me the tremendous interests that people have in this group.
No labels, you know, started in twenty ten, twenty eleven claim, you know, Democrats are too left, Republicans are too right. We need common sense, bipartisan centrism. And they got some members of Congress on the right and left to Republicans and Democrats to work together. And they are okay, fine, go ahead and do that, raise money for that whatever.
But now they have working on a project to get on the ballot in states across our great land so they can then put a residential nominee and vice presidential nominee what they call a unity ticket on the twenty war ballot. Now, their idea is like, well, we only do this if the Republicans are too extreme and the Democrats are too extreme, and we can win with a
centrist ticket that consolidates the Republicans and the Democrats. Of course that's nonsense, that it won't win, and most political analysts and I have to agree with this, but people who run the numbers and the nominees were Biden and Trump, it would likely draw more votes from Biden. Therefore it could help elect Trump and spoil the race for Biden. They claim that's not what their intent is.
It clearly is what their intent is.
They're a dark money group, meaning they don't reveal who's funding them.
Although over past.
Years largely Republicans.
We have seen that big Republican pro Trump donors, including Harlan Crowe remember him, the Nazi member of Billire collecting billionaire benefacturers. Yeah, remember that guy, Clarence Thomas.
I lose my breath just identifying who he is.
But he gave money to old Labels and other billionaires of that ILK have given money and they won't reveal their donors. It's the very suspicious, very question while they do have never Trump Republicans like your Power, Rick Wilson's
and other Democrats very worried. All they have to do to screw up the election is get a Joe Manchin who won't say whether he will or won't accept their nomination on the ticket, and then if he draws ten twenty thousand votes in some key states Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, the most likely come from Biden, and that could give Trump a way to win the electoral College vote. Once again, that's the worry about them. The story that I did this week to bring it back to the most important
thing me. The story that I did was I was looking on their website, just sort of thinking about various story ideas I might do on them, various articles looking for leeds, and I clicked on the donate but here help us donate money to us, and it took me to a website run by a group called anadot a n E d O T.
I said, Huh, I've never.
Heard of these guys, but it's not my expertise.
I'll look them up.
And I took a few Google searches to realize that anadot is a right wing online tech company that processes donations and its clientele is mostly almost entirely the far right Maga Republicans. People like it tries to raise money from Marjorie Taylor Green, Jim Jordan, Lauren Bobert. It works for Turning Point USA, for the Susan b Anthony, which is anti abortion, focus on the family. And you know, it not only works for them, it actually has a has a service in which it tries to encourage direct
payments to these organizations. So here is a group No Labels that says we don't like the extremements of the right or the left, but every time you give them one hundred bucks four dollars or so, of that goes to this tech firm that's working to amplify and support far right Maga Republicans, ultra conservatives, and folks like Marjorie Taylor Green and Jim Jordan. It seems completely out of whack. And the funny thing was Annaot wouldn't talk to me.
And I tried a gazillion times to reach somebody at No Labels to get an explanation, and again and again and again they did not return my calls. They did not return my emails, and I got some on the phone and they said, oh, you need to talk to our communications deputy, Marianne Martini.
She's not real and.
I don't know she exists on Lincoln's I think she's real. And I said, okay, it's through to her. They said, oh, well you can't, but you can email her. I said great, and I said, can you give me her email address? They said no. Now, two listeners out there, this may not sound so bizarre, but we covered politics so many years I have never come across a political organization as a reporter. If you ask for the email of their
communications spokesperson, they won't give it out. But they didn't, and I left a message and Mary Anne Martini, remember that name, Mary Ann Martini not email me back, did not call me back. So, for whatever reason, they are not, you know, being transparent or accountable about the firm or about where their money comes from.
So we'll see.
At the end of the day, they may not put anyone on the ballot and this may all blow over, but right now they are setting up to do that, which is why Rick Wilson and others are very worried about them.
They're trying to get mansion to run as an independent right, that's the goal.
That seems to be the goal. He is affiliated with them. He won't say one way or the other whether he'll do this. You know, I don't like making predictions. My hunches that he knows he's sort of to know that he can't win running.
Of course he knows he can't win, but that doesn't matter necessarily.
But I don't know. Being blamed for the restoration of Donald Trump is a pretty heavy thing to have on your resume at the end of your career. So I don't know if he would go for this or not. But of course he won't say so until the very, very very last minute, because you know, like a lot of these folks, if power to not say you get booked on shows, people you know are more kind to you. Chuck Schuert may want to make sure not to piss you off. You know, he has no interest in not
in saying that he won't do this. So we probably won't know until sometime next year.
Incredible stuff. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I hope you'll come back.
You know what, there's one way to get me to come back, ask.
Thank you, David Hi.
It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for the time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it, and now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support.
Katherine Rampel is a columnist at The Washington Post.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Katherine.
Rampal, thanks for having me. Very excited to have you and for the Washing Post. You have a very interesting story this week. I feel like what's happening with the IRS right now, and what's happening with this sort of politicization of the IRS is so weird and just like kind of a little bit terrifying. And I remember that you are the person who went to the IRS to that cafeteria, right.
Yes, I have been on the let's give more money to the IRS bandwagon for like over a decade.
Will you start by telling us about the cafeteria.
Yeah.
Yeah, After many months of pleading, I got permission to visit one of the Internal Revenue Services processing centers where they I know, this is like every reporter stream.
I can't even imagine how hard it was to get there.
Yeah, yes, yes, I mean they take textpayer privacy very seriously. And also, as you can imagine, the IRS periodically gets threats against it, et cetera. They don't really want strangers
wandering around. But basically, I've been writing for a really long time about how we need to give more money to the IRS, not only for enforcement but also for basic IT modernization, because they are using software from the Disco era, and a lot of the work that's done processing tax returns is still done manually, like with red pens, and then they have somebody manually typing into a computer. They didn't have scanners at the time that I visited.
Okay, so a year ago they didn't have scanners at the IRS.
Yes, So I had heard all these crazy stories about how antiquated their it was, and I had been writing about for many years, like we need to invest in the administrative capacity of government, including in the IRS, And I finally got permission to go visit again.
This was about a year ago, and it was wild.
It was like the weirdest Willy Wonka tour you can imagine, because again like this, this is a place that is usually closed off to outsiders, and they have all of their own strange lingo for different things, like there's the thing that opens the mail that's called the nibbler. They literally manually would cut open envelopes that they receive and then they would cut them open along three sides and then hold it up to the light to see if there was anything inside that might have been missed. And
that was the candler. So there was all sorts of stuff like that that was just fun. But it was also really sad in a way because again, we are the richest country in the world, and we just did not invest in having a government that is even in the late twentieth century, let alone the twenty first century. And when I was there, you mentioned the cafeteria. The reason why that was significant is that the agency was so backloged due to a combination of again really really
old it and COVID. Like in many offices right in many industries, public and private sector, there had been major disruptions because of the pandemic, but they were very severely disrupted by COVID, as you can imagine, and they had tons and tons of these paper tax returns because a lot of people do still sit in their TEX returns
on paper that they could not get through. And everywhere you walked on this campus, which is like basically a giant warehouse, there were just stacks of unprocessed tax returns, including in the cafeteria. The cafeteria it was no longer really functioning as a cafeteria. It looked like a giant corn maze almost of the stacks of paper tax returns.
And you took a picture.
Yeah, it just was a sort of incredible moment of like, this is an institution that Republicans are trying to kill.
And they've been trying to do it for many years. Like I said, I've been on this beat for a while, roughly around the Tea Party revolution, So twenty ten that's when Congress led by Republicans really started gutting the irs. And I think from then to maybe about ten years after that, their budget fell around twenty or twenty five percent.
I forget the exact number in inflation adjusted terms, and that's part of the reason why they had not been able to invest I mean they had obviously they're still using technology from the nineteen seventy so they had not been investing for a long time in upgrading their IT. But also they ended up cutting back on enforcement. They
ended up cutting back on customer service. You know, if any people listening out there ever tried to call the IRS during that period, you know your call never got answered, or if it did, you know you might have been waiting on hold for an hour, which is unfortunate because if you're calling the IRS, it probably means you're trying to pay your taxes correctly.
And honestly, I knew have a question.
So anyway, so the whole thing was really wild and as I said, using this really dated technology leading to a very frustrating experience for honest taxpayers and an easier way for dishonest tax payers to get away with their dishonesty.
And the piece published like in August of last year, so I visited I think in late June maybe, and then it finally ran in August, and it was around the time that the Inflation Reduction Act passed, which is significant because the Inflation Reduction Act invested eighty billion dollars long term in the Internal Revenue Service and gave them the ability to plan right like, rather than than dealing with the whims of congressional appropriations from year to year,
which you know, again, they could massively fluctuate from one year to the next, and it was very difficult to do, like an IT upgrade, which might require several years and stages of upgrades that had been challenging to do. So this was the opportunity for the agency to finally invest in those longer term investments.
Again.
Both they bought scanners amazing, Wow, they bought scanners, and they hired a bunch of customer service representatives and grave and you know a lot of that stuff. A lot of those kinds of investments require training. So you might hire someone today, but they can't actually begin work for several months, or they can't begin interfacing, I guess with the public for several months because they need to get trained on taxpayer privacy and whatever else.
And now with this debt ceiling deal, explained to us how that's changed.
So the Republicans, after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, almost immediately began trying to undo the investment in the IRS. And even before this debt limit deal, when you know, was was finally resolved, like one of the first acts that the Republican House did this term, you know, after assuming the mature already was they tried to defund the IRS and they wanted to take away most of the money,
particularly from the enforcement efforts. So when I say enforcement, what I mean is basically audits, exams, appeals, all that
kind of stuff. Through the negotiations over deficit whatever, you know, like Republicans were claiming that they really cared about holding the debt limit hostage because they cared about our long term fiscal health, which to me is a contradiction in terms, because holding the debt limit hostage and threatening a global financial crisis will only make US debt look riskier and make it harder for us to burrow whatever. That's a
whole other thing. One of the things that they demanded, ostensibly in the name of reducing deficits, reducing spending, was to at least partly defund the IRS. And again, the IRS is a little bit different from other agencies, and that when you spend a dollar or you know, you spend if a government spends a dollar I don't know, on a Medicare bill. That may be a dollar well spent, but it is a dollar out the door on net gross and net. Let's say when you spend a dollar
on the IRS. It's a little bit different because the IRS brings in money both through those enforcement efforts i e. Enforcing the tax laws that already exist when people break them, whether deliberately or not. You know, I guess I should be careful. Not everybody who underpays their taxes is a tax cheat per se. People make mistakes, but when the IRS gets money, it uses that money to bring in
more money, unlike most other forms of government spending. And so the effect on deficits, on our long term fiscal health, on fiscal responsibility, whatever term of art you want to use, is actually quite bad if you take money away from the IRS. And the way that this deal was structured, it's still kind of vague. As you may know, there were like some side deals that went on with this
debt limit agreement. There's some stuff that was actually in the bill that both chambers of Congress passed and the President's signed, and then there's like some gentlemen's agreements kind of things about what they're going to do with future appropriations, and most of the clawback of funding from the IRS is in that ladder category, so they haven't actually, we haven't actually seen the full extent of where that money's
coming from. Most likely it will come out of future enforcement efforts, because that's the thing Republicans most want to go after, and that is frankly hardest, I think for even politicians who are not anti IRS to defend right, because like, it sounds scary when Republicans say, oh, all of this money is going to be used to hire eighty seven thousand gun toting IO agents to you know, bang down your door whatever.
Do they have guns?
See, there is a very limited subset of IRS agents who are carrying firearms.
Oh wow, I mean, why should they be different than everyone else in this country?
Right?
Well, it's like if you're protecting a witness who is testifying in court, for example, Okay, in some heated case, there are some people who have that job, who work for the IRS, who are armed, and the IRIS actually does a lot of other stuff that I think people don't necessarily realize that they do. So you may recall that last year when Russia invaded Ukraine, there was this effort to like seize all of these Russian yachts and
things like that. Actually the IRS was tasked with doing that, I mean, I think in conjunction with some other agencies. So they do a lot of like sort of law enforcement d type stuff, even if it's not the core part of their business that most people associate with the Internal Revenue Service, So there are a few that are armed. But you know, if you get audited, like you're a Joe taxpayer and you get it audited, I do not think the agent showing up at your door is going to be you know, armed.
Yeah, well that's something explain to us.
How really, funding the IRS is a good idea.
If you want people to pay the taxes that they already legally owe. That is, we're not talking about raising tax rates. We're just saying, whatever the laws already are, we want people to pay to pay that amount. So like nobody feels like a sucker because they're the one dope abiding by the law and their next door neighbor is cheating a tax man, right, in which case the honest person in the long run is going to have
to make up for the shortfall. If you want to collect the taxes that are already owed, if you want to make it easier for people who are trying to follow the law to follow law, because we do have a really crazily complicated tax code, which is a whole other thing, and that's Congress's fault, that's not the IRS's fault. You want people at the agency to be able to answer the phone and to respond to mail, and to
have ways of answering questions. That requires money. And the piece that I wrote this week, which I think is the reason you wanted to have this conversation, was about some really fascinating new research from a group of economists at Harvard, the Treasury Department, and the University of Sydney that looked at internal IRS records to see basically what
the ROI was on different types of audits. So, like I said, you give IRS a dollar, they bring back more than a dollar because they use it to collect money. This team of researchers used internal accounting data from the agency and also records from the results of like seven hundred thousand audits to figure out, Okay, well you is a dollar to audit a poor person. How much money do you spend like how many audits can you do and how much money do you get back for audit?
And if you use a dollar to audit a rich person, same deal. And they basically found that, yeah, it is more expensive upfront to audit higher income taxpayers because you know, if you're Donald Trump, you have a really complicated tax return and a bunch of partnership returns and other things that are really hard to sift through. That requires many hours of examination from government employees to figure out where you might have done something wrong. And it also generally
requires a little bit more specialized skills from those IRS employees. Right, the kind of person that you might need to employ the IRS to audit Trump is different from the kind of person or the level of training, level of whatever sophistication degrees, whatever that I'd be necessary to audit like a low income person who has a very simple tax return. And so they did find that it costs a lot
more money upfront for those reasons. You know, mostly that it requires many more hours to audit high income people, but the amount of money that it comes back is ginormously greater. So for like the bottom half of the income distribution on average, the IRS basically breaks even. They spend a dollar auditing you know, the local plumber or whoever, or school teacher, like, maybe they get about a dollar back on average. You know, some people maybe they pay more.
They maybe they owe more, and some people maybe they owe nothing more or even you know, maybe they overpaid whatever. On average, the IRS basically breaks even. Not the case at the very top of the income distribution. So for the people in like the top one percent, for every dollar that the IRS spends auditing them, they get back on average about three bucks. The top point one percent they get back over six dollars. And again that's accounting for the fact that people are going to appeal and
preach people in particular, sometimes the IRS will lose those cases. Still, on average they get back six bucks back, and that's just what they get from the audit. The other really interesting findings from this research was that what matters even more in terms of baying for the buck from the spending on auditing is not what they get back from the audit itself, but how the tax payers behavior changes
going forward. So when you audit Donald Trump, if they ever conclude the never ending audits, of course, maybe you
get a few bucks back. But what really matters is that in the decade after the audit, Donald Trump starts falling the law right right right and stops or Don Trump or whoever, but you know, stops taking dodgy deductions that they shouldn't be taking, starts reporting income that maybe they had been receiving under the table, or stops reporting as a dependent a child who doesn't live with them
most of the year. Whatever the thing that they were doing that turned out to be wrong again, whether that was an honest error or deliberately cheating Uncle Sam, they generally stopped doing it. The amount of additional tax revenue that comes in from these sort of chastened taxpayers is roughly triple what gets recovered from the initial audit and
requires basically nothing more from the IRS. Right the IRIS has done its audit, but now these people are following the law going forward, and the RIS doesn't have to get on the case anymore. So all of which is to say that when you take money away from the IRS, it costs a ton of money, especially if the line item that you are taking money away from is auditing the rich. The headline number is basically for the highest earners. Every additional dollar that Congress could give to IRS could
bring back twelve dollars in return. When you include those deterrence effects and you include you know what gets recover from the audit all of that, that's an enormous return on investment. Like any rich person can tell you, you know the rich person is being audited. They'd be like, that would be a great return if I could get twelve dollars for every one dollar I spend.
So interesting. Thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Act Jesse Cannon.
My junk fast.
We're going to bring Rick Wilson in for a special moment of fuckery right after this. But I think you want to address what's been going on with Joe Rogan RFK Elon and doctor Peter Hotez.
Elon and Joe Rogan wants doctor Peter Hotez to debate demented anti vaxer RFK Junior, and so I have an offer for Joe fear factor bug eater Rogan. You can debate me anytime you want. So, Rick Wilson, let's talk about our moment of fuck ery. Do you guys want us to podcast again? Listeners? If you want Rick and I to start a podcast again, tell us, tell us Rick, send Rick lots of text messages. Rick.
Yes, if you were to take.
A moment that was your most fucked up moment, perhaps a person who is who has sparked your ire who would it be?
God? This week?
Yeah?
Look, I mean I think I think the pinnacle of all of this this week has to be you know, Trump himself. He continues to play this fucking game with America that he's above the law, that he knows he will never be held to account. At some point, it's like it's like a morally offensive grind on everything, and I seriously, I do it kind of weighs on me sometimes.
Like the death of American democracy weighs on you.
I wish there was some sort of shame factor that still existed in American society, but there's not.
You want mine, yes, because mine is part of yours. This week, Donald J. Trump, perhaps you've heard of him after he had his federal indictment. On the way out, she went to a famous restaurant in Miami called Versailles, right, yes, indeed, and at Versaill in the Palace of Versailles, not to be confused with the Versailles in France. He told the group that he no, indeed, he told the group that he would treat It was all his treat.
People then ordered and he properly left.
I feel like that is the lesson of trump Ism right there, like Burla Scone all his treat and then he leaves.
So I was in Italy two weeks ago and this one guy said to me, he goes. You know, Trump learned everything everything he had about criminality from berlo He goes. But the thing about Burla Sconey was he was a real crook. But he would also pay for dinner. Trump has never paid for a dinner. Is fucking life. I promise you I will say this too, Molly. I mean, if you're in Miami and you go to Versailles and you don't eat a croquetta or as I say, I will eat my body weight in croquetta's, and that's a
lot of fucking croquettas. And he didn't take any croquettas to go, didn't get a media note, che or a Cuban sandwich hot and pressed or anything. Right, he stops at a goddamn McDonald's drive through on the way back to the airport, and he's McDonald's on the plane. It's just like it's like the well done steak of visiting Miami. You don't eat a well done steak. You don't get McDonald's when you're in Miami, one of the greatest food cities in the country. That's so inffo lesson and.
There it is our moment of fuck gery, Rick Wilson.
I hope you will come back.
I will certainly come back, as you know. And I think I'll have you on the on the enemy's list again soon because people liked you.
I can't imagine why. 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.