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 we are live from the DNC again with an absolutely insane lineup of people who will tell you such interesting things about what's going on in America.
Rep.
Don Bayer stops by to tell us why he's in college at seventy four to leorre an Ai. Then we'll talk to Caroline Glee, who's running for Mitt Romney's old seat in Utah, and she'll tell us how we'll turn that seat blue. Then we'll talk to Rep. Rose de World about how VP Harris changes the game. Ben Many Routtinall, who's a member of the Colorado General Assembly. We'll talk about cleaning up one of the most polluted areas in America.
But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Link of Projects owned Rick Wilson.
Welcome back, Few Fast Politics, My buddy Rick Wilson.
Hello, Molly John Fast. We are both on the same West coach right now.
We are on our West Coast leg of our blockbuster tour.
Yes we are, and it is and folks, if you're looking for information on our blockbuster tour. It's politics as unusual. Dot bio bio move quickly because to our surprise, people actually want to hear us do our hi juice and for volity on stage, and it's selling out fast. I'm very importned by that.
If you're listening to this and you're in San Francisco, because this comes out tomorrow, you can come tonight and listen to us in San Francisco. There are tickets. Look on our social media. We both have been tweeting about it, We've.
Been reading about it. People were sick of us.
I think there are very few tickets, but there certainly are one or two. On Tuesday, we are in Los Angeles, and a few tickets left for that too, we think, though who knows, but check it out. So Rick Wilson, we are gonna do two seconds sort of wrap up on the convention, and then we have a lot of other.
Stuff to talk about.
But I do think it's important to talk about the convention because even though we were both there, so we have been like living in I want you to talk about this because you have so much more experience with this and have been at so many conventions and also on the wrong side of No.
I was at a couple of Democratic conventions on the spin team for the Republicans.
Yeah no, no, that's why I say on the wrong side of it, but I thought so as a partisan on the opinion side, it felt to me like, I mean, maybe the speeches could have been a little shorter, but ultimately it could not have gone any better.
Well, speaking of speeches being the right length, the fact that Vice President Harris delivered a thirty eight minute speech instead of a ninety two minute speech, it makes it difference. I mean, Dorobald Trump on his acceptance speech and I couldn't remember a single detail from it other than me, me, me.
And how long did Harris speak?
For thirty eight it was perfect. It was right on the money, and people need to remember we live in a shorter attention span world than most speech writers myself including grew up. Yet Right always makes the key mistake in his speeches of going full cast going for like its for the audience starts to suffer from dehydration.
Yeah no, I definitely he goes bolcastro. I would almost say he goes full Mussolini.
It is rather Mussolini asked. But look, I will say this about this convention. Molly, as an observer of these things, is an attendee of many of these things. The only people who were complaining at this convention were the media and Obo, who.
I'm very conflicted because I am a member of the mainstream media, and I also know how imboardant the mainstream media is to democracy, and I do think that the DNC did not treat them with the kind of reverence that perhaps they are used to. I also feel like the mainstream media has been equally virulent towards anti democracy and we want to give free breakfast.
The attitude by some folks in the press that was, you know, she won't sit down for a four hour interview, she won't do this, she won't do that. I guess somebod that was taking it out on her for that. But this is not a campaign, Molly, with two normal candidates. It's a campaign with one guy who is compactive, detached, realery and.
Also wants to end American democracy. Like he's crazy. But he was crazy in twenty sixteen.
Now he's ready to end the American experiment and his people are with him.
They are.
And my take on the speech itself was it was one of the most important speeches in modern political history. She in thirty eight minutes, managed to illustrate the stakes for the country, diminish and condemn Trump in the appropriate way, and to show a new way forward for the Democratic Party on how to run and win and how to expand with coalition. You know, there are a lot of my former you know, Republicans and fellow you never Trumpers.
During that speech, all of our chats were burning up, like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this is amazing. And it really spoke to me that a lot of the sort of gentry Republicans who are, oh, I don't like Trump's greets, but I do like his policy. A lot of those people were the most outraged by the speech. How dare she talk about freedom? How dares
she talk about strength? That's not her had a very stoppy foot kind of piece in the journal about it, which tells you it was effective, which tells you it was the right way.
To approach it.
So look, I think that I think the convention, in terms of its optics, in terms of its composition of the speakers, including a lot of former Republicans who are voting Democratic now, really sends a signal to the country. They did not fall into what I call the Benetton trap of the Democratic Party, which for years has been sort of every single interest group has to have all
of its things on the stage all the time. And by showing America that you can be a Democrat and be patriotic, that you can shout USA, USA, or you can wave an American flag and not feel like MAGA owns it. That's a really important message coming out of this because the ownership in the culture of the symbols and signifiers of American history and American political life are
things that people love. If all of the Republicans use them, fly them, talk about them, you know, it goes back to the old white, pale Pastel's problem for the Democrats, and they've gotten away from it at long last. And I think it has had an enormously powerful effect on where the ticket is right now, where the campaign is right now.
Yeah.
I also think that when you watch, it's pretty interesting to watch these Republicans get mad about it when they gave it away. Donald Trump gave away patriotism. Yeah, he ran on America's lescape. He ran on you know, suckers and losers as I mean, you know, as much as he backed away from it, he also ran on it American isolationism.
That was how he got here.
So you know, I'm not conflicted, but I do think that speech was not a speech for the Democratic base, which makes sense because you know, she's trying to win a general election here and you saw some people that were on the far left were mad about some of the elements in it. But here's the fundamental problem, and it's what is currently sinking Donald Trump. And it's a problem for all political candidates, which is you have to
appeal to your base but then grow your electorate. And Donald Trump is just you know, in twenty sixteen, somehow he managed to sneak it through the you know, sort of win by just embracing his base and saying fuck you to everyone else. And now you can't keep winning elections like that, and that is where Donald Trump is stuck in. I mean, I think a really interesting thing that we saw today, which just spoke to me, was in playbook this morning.
Right, Donald Trump is now pivoted to be pro choice.
The Donald Trump truth the other day of my administration be great for women's rights.
I'm like women's reproductives, great ups what.
What Yeah, that was incredible. So they had Lyla Rose.
Who was the founder of the anti abortion group Live Action. Complete lunatic only is it not principled. It's not going to help Trump campaign to be trying to sound like a Democrat.
Right now, yesterday and.
The day before, Donald Trump has been on truth social NonStop. He has been flailing around NonStop. Now having been on the road now for a couple of weeks. The things I've been hearing out of the Trump world. There was a senior Trump person who's a meaningful part of their campaign who actually took three days off last week. And really, I'm off in Trump World right now when the building is on fire and the occupant is spreading gas around
it everywhere. I mean, this thing is teetering, and I don't want people to get cocky, and I want people to overestimate where we are. It will still be a brutal race, guys. There are still a lot of money that will come out for him in the end. There's still a lot of fuckery occurring. A lot of them are counting on corruption in election offices like in Georgia and elsewhere to pull out a fake win in the end. So I don't want people to be complacent, but right now,
everything they've thrown at Harrison Walls has failed. Everything they've tried the new to reset Trump has failed. Everything they've tried to do to rebuild his momentum has failed. You know, on Friday, when Tony Fabrizio, his polster, Toney the pollster, came out with that poll that made you know, even the guys at Rasmus and go, whoa easy their pal So seven points in Arizona. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's where
it is. But when you see them trying to manage him that way, and you see him able to control his impulses and his statements and trying to spend things that are unspinnable, and trying to get back the mojo he had in sixteen on social media where he could tweet something and then the Clinton campaign would respond with like a fourteen page memo about the tweet. People would be freaked out and it would be the top of
the news and all that other shit. But look, he's also facing up some stuff that he is really really going to break him. The Federal Reserve is going to cut rates, Gas prices at the barrel are plunged, right now. The reason you're paying a lot for gas is not because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It's because gas prices up the barrelhead have been low, and gas companies have been working. You. We're such a low point that they're gonna have to that they're going to cut prices significantly.
You're going to end up at the by the rest of the whatever's left of the summer and end of the fall, with inflation going down, your rates going down, and gas going down. You just took away one of the underlying predicates of Donald Trump's.
Campaign, right right, No, no, exactly.
So let's talk about RFK because Jesse wants us to talk about RFK.
I want to never talk about RFK.
How did RFK get locked in that room with five rabbit wolves? Man?
That was really word.
The wolves struck back.
But no, it's not funny to talk about terrible things happening to people, you know.
But let's talk about RFK for a minute.
RFK has i supposedly and again we are talking about things that RFK has self reported, So take all of this with a grain of salt. But he said that he had wanted to meet with Harris, and she had refused. I think that is a good call on her part if true.
Do you know why she refused because she's a lawyer. Yeah, she knew that what he was doing was say, I want to meet with you to fight, figure out what position you'll give me when I quit.
Yeah.
Now, look, I am not one of those people who thinks that Donald Trump is going to get indicted on whatever statutory restriction that comes under by the time the election rolls around. But I should just remind you he does not mind.
Criming, right right, No, No, he's a good trade of criming.
And also he never gets held accountable, unlike Harris, who does. Because if there's one thing we've learned in Trump's America, so Trump can get away with anything and no one else can, not even his people.
Molly, Can I just say something about that? That's the double standard that I have. You know, it's not just both sides in them, Okay, Right, It's like, why hasn't Vice President Harris produced a nine hundred page plan on climate change or a page plan on healthcare or whatever
it is. Why won't she personally brief us on every detail on page forty seven of the Climate and Donald Trump goes out and says, I'm going to throw my shit all over the place like a monkey in a zoo, and they go, oh, yes, Well, Trump's policies are very clearly understood by the voters, and I mean right.
But look, there's quite a lot of that.
Yes, but Jesse really wants us to talk about what OURFK Junior are leaving the race means. And the reality is people will tell you a lot of bullshit, but nobody really knows right. So on Friday, someone very smart politically said to me, oh, it's going to hurt her. But then this weekend I saw some poll ling and writing that said, actually, it may not do anything. So the reality is we don't really know what it's going to do. It could hurt her, it could not hurt her.
If RFK Junior was a beloved son of the Kennedy family, a symbolic through line of the legacy of the Kennedys RFK and JFK, it would be something. But what we saw from RFK as he unwound this campaign, Let's not forget he was put in the campaign because Bannon and Stone and Tucker and others said, if you do this, it'll fuck Joe Biden. There's a core paper trail on that. During the course of his campaign, he was talking to a group of people who are Trump voters to some degree,
the conspiracy nuts. But he was also trying to maintain this I'm the do good or independent bullshit, which was awkward and false all the time, but none of it was really working at scale. Right.
He was doing better before he started campaign.
He was doing better before people started knowing that he was RFK junior. While the dead bear and the falconry and the drugs and all the other weird shit, while those things were all sort of background noise to it, I don't think people hadn't fully internalized that this guy is pro polio. This guy is truly a dark bad guy. And when I see his polio folks, he doesn't just oppose MNRA vaccines. He opposes all vaccines.
Yes he does.
If you worked to kidd an iron lung of Republican Barbaria, probably have you noticed how much the magas are trying to make RFK a thing. It's all che everything's different now, the whole election has been turned right down. We went and get the fuck out of here.
I think That's a really important point too, is that Republicans keep saying like this is a game changer, and this change is in the election that but ultimately we don't really know what it does.
We have some initial brush fire stuff on it. We're not really seeing this as changing the ballgame because a lot of RFK voters, it turns out, are in states where the decisions already made. We know how that state's could already go. They're not as prevalent as a percentage of the voting population in a lot of the swing states as they are in a few places where he's
much more popular. And look, all of the panic over RFK, I think is going to fade in comparison to the fact that RFK said Trump wants me to meet his running mate Donald Trump. Literally you tweeted a thing about calling the two of them that ticket. If I were Jadvan, I'd get a food taster, some level four body armor, and I'd up my security procedures.
Do we think that Trump?
I mean, obviously the ballots are already No.
No, they're mostly printed. Oh, by the way, that's the other part of this. RFK is going to come off the ballot in a lot of states. He's going to stay on the ballot in a lot of states too, And if he stays on the ballot, that's no good for Trump. He doesn't get to like at the end of it, I'm giving my votes to Trump after the election's over. That's not how any of this works.
Yeah, good point, Rick Wilson.
We have even more toward dates for you. Did you know the linked projects, Rick Wilson have Fast Politics, Bolli jug Faster heading out on towur to bring you night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest and we'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be in Chicago at
City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be Infilliate City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater and today. We just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh as we get through this election and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives
in a golf club again, we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead of cry your way through this election season and give you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio. Don Buyer represents Virginia's eighth district.
Welcome too, Fast, Congressman Don Bayer, John Fast.
It's very exciting to have you.
You are the luckiest congressman because you do have just a crazy commute to work, right.
It's a crazy commute. And more members of Congress, the staffs, the retired members, a more peace scorps volunteers, more generals.
That it's a very politics is our cottage industry?
Oh wow, that's something, So let's talk about You wanted to understand AI, so you went back to college.
What does that explain?
Well, I wanted to understand it for a long time because I was just fascinated with the idea that we're generating so much information that we can't sort through. We can't see the connections, whether they are causation or correlation, we just don't see them at all. And I tried to do it on Coursera, Yeah, but I didn't have enough math background to succeed.
So a couple of years ago, all of us.
Three years ago, I went back to our local university, George Mason University, and started taking the prerequisites for a graduate program.
In machine learning.
How was that?
It's fun? I'm not even halfway through sixteen.
You'll literally go, you're really doing that?
Yeah.
Next Monday I start my course on data structures and I have to drive out to Fairfax Monday and Wednesday.
Drives my congressional schedule crazy. Yeah.
Yeah.
So here's my question for you.
One of the ways in which Congress is criticized is that a lot of people say this, including myself, not that I don't love you guys, but there's not enough tech regulation. And some of it is because a lot of members don't understand technology. Now, you obviously taking an AI course. You know you're doing an AI graduate program, so you obviously understand it better than probably ninety nine
percent of Americans, let alone members of Congress. But is that true and why is there so little tech regulation?
Well, the classic case, Molly is social media were the only thing we'd done in twenty five years to say we can't soothe them, right. We gave them immunity for lawsuits, which is crazy. So we're trying not to make that mistake again. The various AI task forces up there, the most important one was appointed by the current Speaker and by HACKEM Jefferies, twelve Democrats, twelve Republicans.
So trying to put together.
A meaningful set of legislative initiatives like next month, you know, but we should report by the end of September, hopefully pass a bunch by the end of this year.
Wow. So we're trying to get ahead.
It's naive to think we'll ever be ahead of the American public, but we're trying not.
To make the same social media mistake.
I hate to hold Europe up as an example here, but they've done a better job with regulating social media and it's made a lot of big tech companies very mad, which is probably a good sign. Do you think something like that could happen here.
I do you know Europe has already passed an AI Act while the EUAI Act, and they worked really hard on it.
I met with them half a dozen times.
It's generally perceived by most people in America, including the AI companies, as being too prescriptive.
Of course, too legislative. You got to sign up for licensing.
You don't like any legislation. That's why they think it's too legislating.
And you know, but we're getting all the creativity and inventiveness and stuff out of America, so we're trying to do light touch. We're trying to address not regulation for regulation's sake, but rather where there's a downside. For example, think deep fakes, think the challenges with child sexual assault material, the way people are using AI to trash their boyfriends or their girlfriends that dumped them, things like that.
So, as someone who comes from journalism, we made a lot of free content for tech companies.
They used it and.
Basically destroyed all the media companies by using our free content. I mean, is there anything prescriptive that Congress could pass?
Yeah?
You know, they've started talking mally year ago about or two years ago about watermarking. But it has to go much deeper than that, because right now, if you're a photographer and illustrator, when all that stuff gets loaded into one of the big engines, anybody can create something without ever needing an all illustrator or a photographer.
Again, the same thing with.
Poets with music, right with books, Yeah, you publish a book right now, two or three days later, some version of that has been generated by AIH and as being marketed. So there's a lot more to go to protect intellectual property.
Yeah, And do you think that can happen?
I think it has to happen Otherwise who's going to create content if you take away all the monetary centers? For example, I know the motion picture industry is terrified, right about what.
Something like that?
Yeah?
That really does seem like an important thing. Do you think there's a bipartisan appetite.
For that, Yeah, Molly, the good is so far it's very bipartisan. The twenty four people of jayobernoltire Republican from California, tedlu a Democrat from California, lead the effort, and then they've worked hard to try to make sure that that stayed together. I think once one of the big challenges out there right now is the idea of trying to create some kind of long term digital idea that belongs to Molly jong Fast or Don Bayer, that we'll get
away from all the identity theft. That's the only place I've seen Republican pushback because they begin to think world government or I know, the government's going to know too.
Much about songs in women's medical offices.
But nowhere else, nowhere else, Yes, in the bedroom.
Yeah, it is.
By the way, are you you have been doing this for a while, although also ambassadorships, et cetera. Are you surprised at how far right the Republican Party has gone?
It's nowhere near the Republican Party that I knew. I starved eight years in the Virginia Senate. Completely different.
Yeah than this.
I mean, we used to work together all the time. You can never predict how the vote was going to turn out here. You know it'll be two eighteen to two fourteen. Almost every time it was contested.
That no fault divorce thing, Republicans are very passionate about repealing no fault divorce signed into law by Ronald Reagan in California, discuss there's.
So many things that they're talking about.
You know, there are the restrictions on contraception IVF personhood at you know, when the sperm hits the ovum.
Yeah, that are that are just way out of the mainstream.
Yeah.
I just think about when you divorced, when somebody had to be wrong, somebody had to do something really evil to do it. So many people were victimized, thrown under the bus, and or families were forced to stay together that.
Were really bad for them and bad for the children. Yeah, and certainly repressed women's.
Yeah, all it's right. Yeah, thank you so much, Congressman.
Yeah, thank you, Molly good luck.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five
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Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country. So please watch it and spread the word.
Caroline Gleek is a candidate for Senate in Utah.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Caroline, who is running for the Mint Romney Senate seat in the great state of Utah.
That is correct. How are you going to do it?
We are going to get young voters to turn out, to get women to turn out, and you know, when young voters and women turn out, we win.
So Utah start a state in the Democrats talk about that much.
Tell us what you could do in Utah.
Utah isn't to state that the Democratic parties really had their radar on, and I think that is a mistake because Utah is already a lot more purple than it seems. And in our last presidential election, young LDS voters increasingly voted Democratic.
Interesting, Yes, and we were really.
Encouraged also by the results of Nikki Haley really reject Trump.
Yeah, and yeah, it's already a lot more purple.
Fifty three percent of voters in Utah are registered Republican and then a lot of those low are Democrats that file that registered Republican to vote in the closed primaries.
So yeah, Donald Trump has been really alienated the LDS community.
Can you talk about that?
He still was able to get Mike Lee, but it was real sacrilege.
Can you talk about that? Yeah?
Utah voters, we are you know, we have a global perspective, right, We're really tolerant of immigrants, right, and we're warm, inclusive people.
Yeah.
And the Trump agenda, his rhetoric, his status as a convicted felon, the way he openly brags about assaulting women, it's not who we are as Utah's right.
Yeah.
So Utah voters, in our hearts, we are a really warm and inclusive people, global perspective, and we're really ready to make some big democratic gains in the state.
What is your race looking like? Who is your opponent? Tell us a little bit.
Yes, Yes, I won the Democratic Convention with ninety three percent of the votes, so I'll be on the ballot in November.
And my opponent is a career politician.
He's currently serving in the House of Representatives, so he's running to serve in the Senate.
Now.
And he's a really interesting guy. He's very nice, very charismatic. I've worked with him a lot in my role as a citizen and climate activist in Congress.
He talks a big game about what he's.
Going to do for environment, for climate, but when he gets into Congress he actually has a worse environmental voting record than Mike Lee.
Wow.
Yes, he's the founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, yet he's consistently voted to undermine protections for aaron water.
He's a greenwasher.
Why do you think that the Republicans can't get interested in climate?
Just like anything in politics, we have to change the role that big money plays. Yeah, but when you look at who is funding their campaigns, you see how they have to vote. And he is one of the top recipients from the fossil fuel industry in Congress, and the top recipient from our electric utility provider. So you follow the money and then you see how they vote.
What does climate change look like into Utah?
First and foremost, we have a huge impact to our public health from the air quality. The average uton dies on average two years early because of the air quality. During these periods of poor air quality, we see an increased a sixteen percent increased rate of miscarriages. We see cardiac events, mental health challenges asthma. So we get really bad air from the burning of fossil fuels and the way it gets kind of trapped in our Teacup Valley where most of the population of Utah lives. And then
we've been seeing unprecedented wildfire seasons. We have been seeing so many days of record breaking heat. Just we used to have only a few days over one hundred degrees and now we have these really long stretches, and our population that's experiencing homelessness, which has also been in crazy. They're dying of the heat.
Tourists are dying of heat in the national parks.
And then in the winter we're seeing more snow that's falling as rain, which is a big problem for our ski industry and the snowsports economy, which is a major major part of our economy there. Yeah, so those are just some of the impacts, but we expect to see a lot worse wildfires, flooding, and other public health impacts.
Yeah. So interesting and also so upsetting. How it is. Can people find out more about you?
They can go to our website Caroline for Utah dot com c A R O L I N E FO r Utah dot com. If you can, you can chip in a couple bucks. You can do that from any state in the nation. Any American citizen can chip in and it would really go a long way to ensuring
we can run the most competitive campaign. And then if you want to sign up to volunteer, we can also have postcard and phone banking opportunities around the nation and we would really appreciate it because every Senate state counts and we can't turn our back on the investments into these states because we are going take Utah and make it into blue Talk.
Thank you, Caroline.
Rose. The world represents Connecticut's third district.
I'm so excited to have you. Welcome to Congress. Woman. Thank you. You have done this for a while.
You have been to a few conventions I have you have been, you know, one of the really important members who's gotten a ton done progressive legislation. You're just sort of a beloved member of Congress. What does it feel like to be in this Hairess convention?
Well, thank you.
First of all, thank you for the kind words as well. I love what I do. I'm blessed to be able to serve in the House of Representatives. But I have been to a number of conventions since nineteen eighty four. I also headed up the platform committee for John Carey a number of years ago. But I will tell you that we haven't seen the energy, the enthusiasm, the momentum like this for such a long time. Two thousand and
eight we experienced that. But this is palpable. Can I give you not from the convention, but just personally before I came here, I went to the dentist last week and I just went to get my teeth cleaned. I'm sitting in the chair and you can't talk or anything. But I've got the dental hygienis who's just talking to me and talking to me and talking to me about how wonderful Kamala Harris is. We need to get people
out to vote. So I'm saying there is a sense of momentum and energy that we haven't seen in a long time.
She raised five hundred million dollars.
Yes, and she's united. I'll start with uniting the party. United the party.
So I want to ask you a question.
I have been on so many panels where white pundits almost exclusively, men have said that she wasn't the choice, they should skip her, they should you pick some other group of white people. How many times she's incredible, She's done better than anyone could have dreamed about any candidate.
She was so underestimated.
And you've done this for such a long time, don't do you feel I mean, it must feel like gratifying to see how great she is, but also frustrating to see.
How well you know, the fact is they're wrong. Yeah, they're just absolutely wrong. Yeah, And you know, in some ways it's a view that women are not up to these jobs. And without question, she's up to this job. And you know, and she's proving that every day and the work that she also did her own background in California as a prosecutor, as an attorney general. It's a very accomplished women. But it is tougher for women. It's
tough for women in the House of Representatives. Women have to work harder, yes, of course, and nobody hands you anything. You have to fight for what you have and you get it because of your competence, of your capacity, your credibility, and someone who can get the job done, and that is who Kamala Harris is and you know, so she's been doing it. It's just that there's some people who haven't recognized it. But so be it. They're wrong and
she is proving them wrong. You're a member who's known for getting a lot done and being one of.
Those people who's like, you know, pushing legislation.
And I've heard this from other members.
Pelosi is no longer the speaker, but we saw this year her power. This talk to me about like women congress power.
Well, yes, I mean, look, first of all, keep in mind, know when I went to the Congress, there were fourteen women. We now have one hundred and fifty women. And it's not the numbers, it's the agenda and how the agenda changes. When I first came, you know, which is you know, thirty years ago, women and minorities were not included in the clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health. We know that women are physiologically different than men, but all
studies were done on men extrapolated to women. Lo and behold, we got together on a bipartisan basis, the women of the Congress, and we pushed and we pushed, and now there are women and minorities who are included in the clinical trials. Look at the issues that we're dealing with today. Pay equity, equal pay for equal work, is a paid family and medical leave, childcare, paid sick days, and for me, the Crown Jewel is a child tax credit. Earlier on,
we thought we were the crazy ants in the attic. No, now they are the public discourse. At the center of that public discourse. Are all of these issues brought to the four by the women in the Congress in addition to that, but we could rereach out in the legislative body. You have to reach out to build a coalition and that is men as well, that you pull in and form the coalition to get the job done.
Is there still bipartisans going on in Congress?
It's hard on some issues, you know there are and members across the aisle can work together. Look, ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, I've worked with Tom Cole you know in the past Oklahoma, right and I chaired and then he chaired the Labor, HHS, Health, Human Services and Education Subcommittee. In the past there hadn't been an ability to get that bill out of committee. Tom and I
work together. We have different views. We agreed on some things disagreed, but we came to the compromise, which is what you're supposed to do, and we passed appropriations bills and we did that. I did that as chair two years in succession. And you have to do that in the bipartisan way because with those bills, if you don't, the president doesn't sign.
Government shuts down.
Right though Republicans did manage to shut down the government once when they controlled.
All three branches. That's right, which is not nothing.
No, it shouldn't be, and it shouldn't be now, especially with appropriations. You've got to come to a compromise. I get some of the things I wanted, I don't get everything, and that's the same. It's the same for you. Unfortunately, we're in a period of time here where the House majority with the Republicans, they have crafted appropriations bills that not only can't they get Democratic support, they cannot get Republican support. So when we go back in September, it's
going to be a pretty wild time. And they put in all these policy writers that are just ugly poison pills, and they do not belong in appropriations bills. Last go round, we got rid of ninety nine percent of them will do that.
Again, do you think, I mean, what happened to the Republicans in the House.
Well, you know, look, I think they've been captured by a minority that's a very vocal minority that honestly did not come to govern. They don't know how to govern, and they can't govern, but they don't don't want to govern, right, No, they don't.
When you see these stuff that's in the state houses, the Republican state houses, crazy crazy stuff, embryonic personhood, anti LGBTQ stuff, does that stuff come.
Up to the federal government?
And when you have a Supreme Court that's so in the tank for Republicans, how do you push against that?
That view is alive? And well, I mean, this is a full scale assault on women and women's rights. It didn't end with Roe v.
Wade.
You know, that was a piece they've been They've been plotting this for many years. They've now moved really to restrict contraception and IVF. So again, as I say, it's a full scale assault. And for me, what it portends is that this is a lack of respect, a lack of trust in women to make decisions on behalf of themselves. And their families. Lane and simple, We're.
Not going to roll it back. Thank you, Thank you.
Many.
Routin All represents District thirty two in the Colorado General Assembly.
Welcome to fast politics.
Mann, that's right, Thank you so much for having me.
Mollett, tell us what you do, explain to us. You're absolutely so.
I'm Manny Routinelle. I'm a state representative for Colorado. I represent the great people of Commerce City, which you know is a community full of vibrant, generous people. Unfortunately, it is one of the dirtiest districts, not just in the state, but in the entire country. And that's a result of industrial polluters that are trying to profit off of the backs of people of color and working class families that
are in my neighborhoods. So my job before I was a legislator was to be an environmental attorney to hold corporate polluters accountable. So I'm bringing that fight into the capital to hold those same corporate polluters accountable.
You are a state rep in Colorado.
What can you do because you are at the state level, what can you do to hold polluters accountable?
Sure?
So, because of the way the clean air at works and so many other of our legislation headed from the federal government down to the states. States actually have a lot of control over how our environmental polluters are able to function within our state, whether it's permitting decisions or the types of regulations that they have to abide by.
And so we can pass all sorts of laws to tighten regulations, make sure that if they do pollute when they're not supposed to be, that those finds are appropriate and cover the costs of remediation or covering the healthcare costs of the people in the area.
So you really can sue to get your people covered.
So we create the laws, then our attorney friends can take to sue.
Yeah, and also agencies as well. Our agencies are able to sue.
Is your governor aligned with those.
Yes, So we've got Governor Jared Poulis and he has luckily.
Been interviewed him. Oh great, he's.
Done a great job. He's been championing these issues for a long time. Of course, there's always more to do, and I'm sure he's always there to help us get there. You know, there's always frustrations when we have to I'm supposed to be fighting on behalf of my people as hard as I as I can, and he's got more different communities to consider, so there's always a little bit of attension there, but for the most part, he's been a great ally on this fight.
What do people need to know about your district and about your fight?
What they need to know is that my area is an environmental justice community of Latinos, working class people, and the reason why it's the most polluted area, not just in the state but in the entire country is because of these industrial polluters and also the way the highways crisscross the area. What they need to know is that these people are amazing. They're generous, they're kind, they're loving. They want to have everything that every other American wants
to have. They want to have food on their table, a roof over their heads, to hang out outside, playing on the playground, whatever it is, and not get cancer. And so these are folks just like you and me. Unfortunately, they've been put in a really bad position by some industrial polluters, and so it's important to hold them accountable.
What does that look like, higher rates of cancer, higher rates of asthma, nice carriages.
What does that look like?
You named so many of them pulary shoes of all kinds, heart disease, you go down the list, and because of the air and water concerns, you have all sorts of issues that the community has to face. I've got kids that have nose bleeds only in this area as opposed to anywhere else. They've got asthma attacks when they're on the playgrounds in this area more so than anywhere else. So it's a really tough issue for quality of life.
It's a really tough issue for healthcare costs, and that's all borne by this population as opposed to the corporate polluters that are making these profits.
Are any of the corporate polluters still polluting?
Yeah, unfortunately, we do have a couple.
Tell us who they are, bad actors?
You want names, the details? Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah.
That's good. That's what you're supposed to do.
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely yeah. So my area has the largest oil refinery in the state. It's a company called Suncre, and Suncre is actually headquartered or incorporated in Canada, and so a lot of the profits that Suncre may have goes to Canada. Now, unfortunately, Suncore as an oil refinery built many, many, many, many decades ago, isn't in the best shape and as a result, their systems fail, and when their systems fail, pollution reeks havoc on our communities.
Yeah, so oil, refinery, suncore, what else is a bad polluter in your neighborhood?
You know, there's all sorts of industrial polluters that are playing a role there that I think we need to make sure.
To industries if you don't want to name them, housements.
All sorts of warehouses that are responsible for a lot of transportation related emissions that I think we need to electrify those industries as much as possible. So it's all sorts of different polluters, and it's a really complex web. Unfortunately, once an area becomes polluted, then you keep piling it on and I think that's where we're at right now.
So that's really interesting.
Is there anything you can do on the healthcare side to help these people?
Yeah, I mean there's all sorts of healthcare related things that we can help cover. A big part of what I think we need to be doing is in the process of holding these corporations accountable, making sure that the fines that we place on them are you use to help the community.
As much as possible.
As being supposed to being shipped off to another part of the state, and so that could be covering healthcare costs that could be electrifying a lot of the transportation, like the buses for instance, things of that nature. So I think we can cover healthcare costs, or we can cover a lot of the upstream causes of those healthcare costs. And I think that's where I think a lot of folks want to spend most of our time and resources.
So interesting, so important. Thank you many, Thank.
You so much.
Molly, No momentuod.
Do you have a moment of uckeray Rick Wilson, Yeah, mor of fuckery.
This week is, as we talked about a little bit earlier, this sort of freakish double standard that Vice President Harris and Tim Wallas are being held to on the matters of policy and media access. Unless you're in Donald Trump's sacred circle, you don't get media access to Donald Trump in a real and meaningful way. What you get is
the Trump Show. You get the Donald Trump standing on the stage, you know, like you just come off there from helping paint thinner and just randomly fucking blurting out lies that are rarely contemporariously fact checked, and rarely he held to account as someone who is a guy who incited a violent insurrection. He's rarely held to account as a guy who overturned Roe v. Wade and brags about it.
And there's a sense of like, oh, well, Trump changes positions, so we're just gonna treat that change of position as if it's real. Yes, And with Harris, it's like I'm starting to see coverage like in this case that she tried in two thousand and one, it's there were questions about whether or not the police handled the DNA evidence properly in a related case. It's so fucking randomly, you know,
tangentially connected. They ignore the shit about Trump or I get this and you know, you know you get this too, for oh, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that about Trump. That's all bigd in the cake. Don't worry about people get Trump. They know it's just a lie. They know he's lying. We don't have to report that he's lying because they know that's not how this works. That's my fockery and brought the media and here we are once again.
And my moment of rockery.
It's going to be close to yours, which is that I'm actually going to talk about Tim Walls or I am gonna Tim Walls. We saw a number of fake scandals. Axios had something Axios reporter are and retweeted the editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Let me tell you guys a secret about the Washington Free Beacon that is not a real newspaper.
And Rick Wilson, I would.
Like you to take a minute to explain to listeners what the Washington Free Beacon is.
Go the Free Bacon, the Daily Caller.
But Free Beacon is literally funded by fancy Republicans as an oppo dump machee.
Well, and that's what the Daily Caller was funded by Foster Freeze for generation. What those things exist to do? Daily Caller and Free Bacon especially, they are the cheapest way to pass a hit piece along. Okay, after I Trump pissed off last week, they immediately sent whatever opa bullshit to the Free Beacon, the Daily call or whatever it is, and they're firing emails at us like only to respond to something that happened in twenty twenty. Fuck
off their whole world. Their whole range of behavior is to try to launder bullshit opo so that the New York Times picks it up, or the Washington Post picks it up, or that Politico picks it up. They post these stories that are always structured in such a way if you read them correctly, you can identify which oppo researcher wrote the fucking thing for them.
Yes, the Washington Free Beacon out a piece that said Waltz boasted in nineteen ninety three he was named the Outstanding Young Nebraska of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.
Well, it turns.
Out what that means is that basically there was a kind of typo and it had said, in fact, he was the junior the outstanding young Nebraska. He was actually the outstanding by the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce. And this is a scandal which Alex Thompson from Axios has found.
It was a typo.
This is the kind of gotcha bullshit that these guys just absolutely love, and they do it to launder it so that the mainstream press will pick it up. And they do it for well they did it before, for clicks. Even though what you should know is Bridebart, Daily Call or Free Beacon, National Review, Gayway Pundit all these things in the right wing media sphere. They've been collapsing for a long time in terms of their readership, and at the moment, in the last set of com Score numbers,
all of them are falling off a cliff. I mean, Magazine probably has more readers than the Free Beacon.
That's amazing.
And look, you know they're working super hard because I'm going to tell you a secret about Tim Walls.
He's very popular.
Yeah, they're going to have to really really up their game if they want to try to take down Tim Walls. And so far, see, they made the worst OPA mistake, right, They made a fundamental opera mistake. Ma pros know. But a lot of these people grew up in like the Trump era, where we were in a particular lacuna in our media and political history where a tweet or a post on Gateway pundit could change an election, not a good way. But they made an opera mistake. They should
have led up with the small shit. Okay, they should have let up and said, oh, well, we'll start with did he lie about this Chamber of Commerce thing? And then find some of the little bullshit thing a little and then you say, when they hit him with the big one. There's a pattern of deceptive behavior on the part of them, right, They're too impulsive and stupid to do that kind of thing, and they just don't understand it.
And Harris has learned a trick, one that I've learned, you know, painfully, is when those people in that particular part of the Maggi ecosphere are going after you ignore them. Learning walls could do in that case to help their their case is to somehow go out and teres with outrage.
That's why Harris whenever somebody says Cambela colombabla, oh campbell a dingdong, all that fucking bullshit they're doing, they desperately want the Harris campaign to go, oh, dull, you must pronounce your name, you up, regis scoundrel and stead They're like the fuck out of here. Yeah, that is the way to handle these people. You cannot give them the attention that will help them elevate the story. You have to just move on, kick ass, go past them.
Exactly. That is right. Thank you, Rick Wilson, Thank you well.
With John Fast, I will be seeing you tomorrow.
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