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.
We have another star studded show for you today. Senator Kristin Jilibrand stops by to talk to us about her interesting plan to pass the Equal Rights A Member. Then we'll talk to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison about how Tim Walls figures into the masculine discussion in the election. Next, Senator Ron Winden, we'll talk to us about the dynamics
of the Senate in twenty twenty four. And lastly we have Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis will tell us about what happens when the government actually works for the people. But first, we have a portion from Politics as Unusual's live show in San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, where Rick and Bally did some disgusting of politics and answered a few of the audience's questions.
We're going to play that for you.
Now we're going to talk about media malpractice here.
There were reports that said Trump agrees to three debates, right, he just made that up. He was like, we're gonna go Fox News debate. No one had agreed to a Fox foxers.
Didn't know anything about it. But he was like, we will debate on Greenland, the ice sheet. It will fight to the death with knives.
And then the debate that had been agreed upon was the ABC debate. But then he was saying, wow, George, right, stop Adams. He doesn't like him. He's very unfair. He asked very unfair questions. It's very unfair.
He's super fair. He's nasty.
He's a nasty man. But he had agreed on it. Now they're back and forth on muting the mics. But the truth is, and again this is the mainstream media problem. Nothing take you take Donald Trump at his word.
You lose right, like he is never so I mean it?
So I think you know, does he do it? So here's the question. He needs to change the narrative. So he wants to do this debate because right now he is just cratering in the polls and she's doing better and better.
His people are petrified that he's going to do this debate.
Yeah.
Yes, they are doing everything they can to poison the well.
Right.
I think his kids, yeah.
I think the kids too. But inside his campaign, they are paralyzed with fear right now because they know there's a really meaningful possibility. And we've got a betting pool inside the Lincoln Project of when he's gonna say the N word, and you know he's gonna. He's so tempted because she's everything he hates. She's black, she's smarter than he is, she's a prosecutor, she's better on camera, she's a woman.
And remember when he said, Johnald Trump.
Said, I believe I'm better looking than come L. Harris.
Yeah, he got very obsessed with that drawing in the Times.
Jesse is madded, he's, oh no, he's happy with us.
Oh good, he's happy.
Are you happy?
All right? Well good? And that means I don't have to wear the shot collar on the next show.
Yeah, exactly right, the lightning.
But yeah, I mean I think that thing where he was like that Time magazine, she looks so beautiful. The drawing was so good. Why was the drawing so good? I never have such a good drawing.
So my friend Maya May who co hosts the show with me, we were in Chicago and we're sitting there talking at dinner the first night of the convention, and she looks at me. She goes, oh my god, I figured it out. Like what she's like, he wants to fuck her? And I was like, no, oh wait, oh wait, because this guy is he is just that shallow. He is just that superficial.
And would you rather be with Trump or Dougie? I'd rather be with Douggie.
Listen, Douggie Dougie as a fellow ball bro. We have to up the charm when we lose the hair.
He's got games, He's got Dougie's got game.
I mean it's also possible that Trump is bald too. Oh, I mean, not to that.
Whatever that confection of like sprayed lemur fur on his head is, I don't think of it is give it his hair?
Yeah?
Yeah, so Trump, So okay, let's do this right now. And if we're wrong, you can yell at us. Does he debate?
Yes or no?
He debates because he can't resist the spotlight? Jesus, he is he is addicted. He is addicted to attention, like the worst possible addiction you can imagine.
And does he lose Oh god, yeah.
All right now, I will say this though. I will say this.
Though, Does it meanstream media cover it like he won.
Yes, they will say, mister Trump presented his points forcefully, when Donald Trump is basically going to be like a monkey in the zoo throwing his feces right right. But here's where I think she really has to win this debate. She will intellectually crush this guy. She will roll him over because he will say the Buddha, the Buddha's She'll go at him, she'll tear him apart. She's a prosecutor. The one thing she has to watch out for is Trump doing his big foot act the work when he
comes over. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you. I know you guys don't like George W. Bush, But there's a debate thing, not a politics thing. When you wait a second, it's important. When al Gore whipped his ass in the first debate in Boston, and I was there, it was bad. It was ugly. The next debate, al Gore was kind of cocky, and he walked out from behind his podium. He walks over towards the W and W's got about's about two feet shorter than than al Gore.
But w stepped out from behind his podium and did this little thing step up to me that physicality means something people watch, that sort of thing. She needs when Donald Trump start starts hovering over her to turn around and put her finger in his chest and get the fuck back.
Yeah.
And and and this is the way in which Harris is very different than than Biden by far.
She will she.
Will tell him to you know, and that and I think that's a real one of the things we don't talk about.
I would if I were her, I would say, Donald, get the get the hell back from me. I'm not one of your victims.
Right. Well, she just also.
See I'm good at this ship. I know what I'm doing.
Yes, but she also just is is much tougher. I mean again, we're not Biden was. It has been a spectacular president, maybe one of the best presidents of my lifetime.
And and you know.
The man when you look at the hand he was dealt coming in soft landing, right, we had an economic soft one in here.
Yeah.
He got us out of the the burning building of COVID. He passed three big significant piece of legislation that actually mean something. Yeah, got him done in a bipartisan fashion, which nobody gives him credit for doing. And at the end of it.
Took really horrible personal attacks and at his living children.
Absolutely, and at the end of the day probably made one of the most courageous personal decisions you can imagine. Yeah, I can't, I can't.
But yes, so, but but he's not as tough as she is.
But so the question on the question before this house is will Donald Trump debate? I think he will because he's an addict.
Yeah, and and needs to change the storyline, right, he needs to change it.
I think you will too, because he needs to change and I just think it's too hard for him to say no.
But the other part of it, too is Trump is nervous about it. We know this from inside the campaign. We know this from reporting because here's the thing. He won the lottery in that debate. He had a million to one night that much. Yeah, where nothing went right for Joe Biden. And it was at the.
End, so it wasn't great. You saw the if you read.
The transcript of Trump, you think he was a guy who'd been out back of the waffle house drinking plastic bottle vodka for a couple of hours. Yeah.
And also, and if you looked at undecided voters in the focus groups, they didn't like him.
No, yeah, so we we we you know. Look, I think he does it. I think he's gonna get whipped.
Yeah.
And if he if he gets whipped in the first one, if he gets whipped in the first one, as I anticipate.
He will, yeah, then he drops.
We'll spend the rest of the campaign golfing. Yeah, he'll check out his ego. Is that weird?
Yeah? But I also think he But he also doesn't really have the end.
I mean, one of the things you see is he's not really traveling in this.
The guy golfs three days a week, and one of our sources inside their world the other day. It's the same person, clearly who told the Times they really wanted him to not watch the convention and so and so he was watching it on the golf course on his phone. Yeah, he was watching it in the residence at Bedminster on his phone and was firing off all those thirty truths.
During Harris's speech, all I can say is, is.
She talking about me?
About me? I might know, Donald, And she's not going to go to the prom with you either.
My favorite one, my favorite one was The War's Hunter. I'm sorry, buddy, like that was a that was a different guy.
Look, Donald has lost his mojo on social media. He's on trash social every day. His dollar store knockoff of Twitter. By the way, I will never call it X. You can hook me up to jumper cables and I'm never calling it X. It's Twitter till I die.
Oh wait, all right, since let's do like two minutes on tech. We're both ter blonde tech, so let's do it. Does Elon end up keeping acts or Twitter?
Or do you think it ends up?
Look? I think he's going to continue to It's going to continue to spiral down on ad rev. It's it's I don't know why, call me crazy, but big brands don't want to be on the same Twitter page as as four eighty eight, you know, or whatever this neo Nazi of the day. Look, the guy's retweeting like actual neo Nazis. Come on, your brand is being poisoned. Linda Yakarino, that's her last job in the world as CEO of Twitter because.
She could not well deserve, right, you could.
She could not get hired as a secretariat a roofing firm in Palatka, Florida after this. I mean, it's just bad. But look he's going to grind it out. As long as he can keep Tesla afloat, he'll still have cash flow for the rest of his life. And sustaining Twitter is different than buying it, right, And so he's gonna keep it because it's his vanity project now and it's his way to finally feel like the girls like him.
Yeah, yes, it's true. We've gone way over, haven't way No, we haven't.
Okay, never mind, Why hasn't Kamala Harris put out a platform on her website?
Who cares? Yeah, honestly, who gives a shit? Yeah you heard it on the speech. Let me tell you why she doesn't do a platform Because when I was a Republican and the Democrats put out a plan for climate or healthcare, guns or any other thing, they'd always be like seven hundred pages long. You know what I would do. I'd get ten in turns. I'd lock him in a room, feed him fucking Domino's pizza, and say find me twenty seven things that scare grandma.
Yeah.
So when the Green New Deal bill was running around, what do they do? You can't have hamburgers or fly on airplanes, you have to eat insectlaws. They always find something scary to be weaponized forget about it. Yeah, Barack Obama didn't have a policy section on his website. He had three things. Hope change, Yes, we can, that's it. Don't play that game, don't fall into the trap. Policy is death in presidential campaigns.
All right, I'll take it. It's a bumper sticker.
Yeah, yeah, Okay, I'm gonna break up the questions everybody was asking because we got a great one from Jennifer lindsay, how do you guys think Steve Bannon's doing?
This?
Is like just a question for reck.
Rerick.
Where is Steve Bannon right now?
Steve Bannon isn't in made in the Danbury Federal Correctional Facility in Danbury, Connecticut and recently received a copy of my book Everything Frump, such as dies.
Are you really?
I sent it to him. I did that to Paul Mannifert when he was in prison, too, and it amused me so much I had to do it again. I also encourage my followers on Twitter to send Steve Bannon as much Japanese tentacle porn as they could find, because what could go wrong? Now Steve will be out of prison in a for the election in about four weeks, five weeks, but he's immediately going on trial for his Build the Wall fraud. There's another guy that depends on
Donald Trump to save his ass. And and look, I'll say this about Steve Bannon. That is a second rate intellect with a first rate a degree of malice, And the malice is made up for a lot of the lack of intellect. He is a guy who really believes
fervently he is an outright nationalist populist. He believes that America is a blood and soil country of white Christians and not a not a propositional nation that from the beginning, as flawed as our beginning was, was designed to allow people to become Americans, no matter where they were born, of what God they worshiped. So Bannon can fuck right off. And I hope he enjoys another prison term after this prison term.
So tell us what you really think.
Well, I think he's gonna come out of jail like that scene in Zulander two with he's ripped his hell, got a big Nazi swastika tattoo with an eagle on it on his chest right between his moves. All right, Jesse, that was light prison segment. I enjoyed it personally.
I often think about Steve Banned suffering for many years because I've had to suffer by listening to his fucking podcast to clip things.
Okay, can I ask you a technical question? Yeah, I record five podcasts a week. I'm exhausted by that shit. How does Steve Bannon, aside from methanhetamine, get on that goddamn podcast and talk for like seventeen hours a day? Yeah?
I think we all know this that you once called him a thing that stuck with me, the human skin tag. Yes, the podcasting feeds the skin tags.
He was like a bag of suet Rancid sue. Okay, well I think he's right.
You're done.
Okay, So a conversation Molly and I had. How many of you watched the Tim Walls talking to Kamala YouTube video?
Yeah?
I thought it was one of the most genius videos I've ever seen. But she is clearly not doing as many mainstream interviews as many people would like.
What do you two think of this?
I think they could fuck right off. I honestly, Chris Solizza, who.
Is on this, Lena, you're doing that later? You're doing that later?
I want to remember I.
Said that campaigns were an unknown geography. I believe they should proceed to the valley where all my fucks have died, lay down on the ground, and let nature take its course, and the buzzard should pick their their skin. The interviews are a trap, right, don't play their game, play game, yeah, and go out do big rallies.
And you know it is actually in a lot of cases it's good to give interviews.
I have to say this because I know you did where my bread is buttered.
But in this case, with American democracy on the line and seventy days to go and the mainstream media really treating the two as the same, I think she should just tell them to book run off.
Yeah, there's there's no upside.
There's no upside for her, and all upside for that.
And by the way, again to look back on the policy question for a second, if she had a policy document for every big subject and then she did an interview, they would say, well, on page seventy four of your climate plan, you say that it's three hundred and twenty five point two parts per billion of carbon, and your plans since it's three hundred and forty and I think, I mean, they will play that game right point where it just becomes this exhausting Washington circle jerk media game.
And I think it's worth pointing out that Donald Trump does have a policy plan. It's called Project twenty twenty five. It mentions his name three hundred plus times.
It's written by many.
People who've worked for him, and he's like, I have nothing to do with it one hundred and.
Forty four authors, ninety three or former Trump administrational campaign officials. Yeah, so he has nothing to do with Project.
Oh no, absolutely nothing.
It's almost like, if you want to learn more or show somebody more about Project twenty twenty five, you could go onto YouTube and.
Write Molly Jong Fast.
Project twenty twenty five documentary is an excellency excellent.
Series, mostly with a lot of heavy lifting from Jassing.
Uh.
Thanks, Okay, another media question. All of us know Trump is not mentally well. He's George is doing lots of things about his psychiatric.
Right, the psychopath.
Yes, you can't call it well being. It's bad to being.
Why do you think the mainstream media can't say those words the same way they can't say many things?
And is there any way to get them to do it clicks and eyeballs. Trump is great for business, right, He's great for business. Yeah, And if you made him crazy, if you said he is mentally ill, if you spoke the truth and said Donald Trump has a suite of mental illnesses that are going to eventually involve thousands of psychiatrists writing new volumes of the DSM, it would disqualify the ability of the press to treat them as equals.
They want you to think this is a standard Republican and a standard Democrat, and they want you to think that's the frame. And if you really admitted that Trump was that crazy, you can't hold that frame anymore.
I also think that mainstream media is terrified of being called partisans working the refs, right.
So they say, well, you know.
And I think also the the cravenness and the craziness of Trump has really caught a lot of the mainstream media flat footed, like they just didn't know how to write those kind of stories without feeling that they were outing themselves as liberal.
There's like a lot of yeah, Wow, there's like a.
Lot it's yeah, it's ridiculous. I agree, there's a lot.
Of Stockholm syndrome with these reporters too, and they're trapped in this they're trapped in this thing. I mean, if you want Trump to call you on your cell phone and then journalism and if you want him to give you, you know, the inside story. Because by the way, half the leaks in the Trump administration are from Donald Trump, right, literally half of them. Yeah, John John Barty.
Right, and Kelly Ann that's right.
Yeah.
By the way, Kelly Ann really hates me.
She really hates me too.
Yeah. Oh oh wow, that's allow.
I have spent entire seconds worrying about that.
Yeah, not me.
Yeah, yes, the feeling is robust, yes, yes, Okay, North Carolina, Florida, Rick, you know the South.
What do you see there? What do you think could happen in this election there? I think Georgia too. Yeah, that's good point.
North Carolina, Georgia should be the question.
Yeah. North Carolina and Georgia are on our list now they weren't before she's opened those up. And I'll tell you three three big things to watch for in Georgia. When Reverend Warnock was on the ballot, we saw African
American voter turn out increase dramatically. We're about to see the same thing in Georgia, our models showing it already starting to pop. The other thing we've noticed in Georgia, and we went out identified a group that the Democrats have very much taken for granted, and rightly so, because they voted with them one hundred percent of the time. Basically that exists in the Atlanta metro area at scale, as in few other places. There's a very very large
cohort of professional African American women in the Atlanta metro area. Okay. It's called the Doughnut of counties around Atlanta, Okay. And in the Doughnut, in four of those counties, three of them, particularly Fulton, Chatham and cab you have enormous numbers of professional African American women. They are fired up for Connell Harris for a good reason. They also are are part of the HBCU Divine nine sorority culture, which Trump of
course called very unimportant. Good play. Donald might want to roll David Duke out again if you're gonna keep up that one, Donald, But so Georgia is going to be a place where we think is now a state that is in the winnable category. A lot of work can be done, a very hard slog ahead, but sixty five percent of the vote in Georgia comes out of the donut. The red parts of Georgia are like the northeast Frontier
province of Pakistan. They're so conservative. The Donut is a purple area of the state, and there's also a purple area of the state in Savannah. And in Savannah that's where a lot of our Lincoln Project Republican voters live. More affluent, more educated, much more moderate. So we think George is moving into the winnable category. North Carolina, the Robinson, the governor's candidate the Republican Party, I call him rabid Tim Scott. He is not good is he is completely bonkers.
And he's running about ten points He's.
Running about ten points behind. We rarely see the down ballot candidate kill the presidential candidate, but we may see that in North Carolina. Also, nor the.
Legacy of trump Ism. Now, you know, you pick these terrible candidates and it.
Just are Yeah, they're always going to pick the trash because Trump likes the trash, and so you're gonna end up. I think North Carolina is very much in play. My home state of Florida. It is a much closer race than it was expected to be. It is now about a three point race in Florida. Don't get your hopes
up yet. But the positive part about Florida being close and by the way, she's tied in Palm Beach and fifteen points ahead and two surveys, one private, one public in Miami Day now Miami Dade, Miami Miami Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. When you add those three counties up, it's fifty four percent of the likely voter turnout in Florida. Does that mean you're gonna win? No, because the rest of Florida again northwesterront Here, province of Pakistan, crazy red.
But Florida is in play in one big place in the country and that's in Trump's brain. They are starting to spend money in Florida, which is like building a bonfire on top of a volcano. You were gonna burn through money like nobody's business. And that's what he's doing now. And if he's spending money.
This does it makes him feel better?
He wants to. He wants he wants the guys in the golf club at Durrow and at mar A Lago to watch his ads on TV. I'm not kidding you by one of the greatest tricks I've ever pulled. I run a lot of my ads wherever he is at his clubs on the golf channel, because those some bitches in the golf club at the end of their round, they're watching it. They see an AD and they're all.
Like, mister Trump, mister Trump.
They're running a terrible He knows it. It's already been running on his phone for three days, but it is. It's a constant. Like you do enough of those, it's like getting shanked in prison. So well, we.
Have even more tour dates for you. Did you know the Lincoln Projects, Rick Wills, that of Fast Politics BLEI jug Faster are heading out on tour to bring you a 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 in Affiliates 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 insight analysis 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. Senator Kristin Jilibran is the junior Senator from New York.
Welcome to Fast Politics. Senator Jilli Brown, how are you.
I'm good.
Tell us your plan for the Equal Rights Amendment.
So most people don't realize this, but almost all the work is done to have the twenty eighth Amendment be the Equal Rights Amendment.
It got two.
Thirds House and Senate votes in the nineteen seventies. You don't have to do it again. Check The second thing Article five of the Constitution requires for an amendment is three quarters of the states have to ratify. The thirty eighth state that ratified it was Virginia in twenty twenty. So you ask, why isn't it the twentieth Amendment. Well, unfortunately Trump was president and he told his lawyers to lie, and they decided that it was invalid because it took
too long. That is not sound legal argument. In fact, all the Purple and Blue agees have already filed briefs that say, once you do the two thirds of House and Senate and three quarters of states ratifying, it becomes an amendment. It just needs to be signed and published by the archivist. So I sat down with the archivist. I said, will you sign and publish the er. She's like, well, don't I need a new legal memo from new lawyers. I was like, nope, you don't work for the lawyers
and those are just advisory. She said, well, don't I need a nod from President Biden? And I said, nope, you don't work for him either. You're just supposed to sign and publish. I believe, however, if we can get a nod from President Biden, that she will be likely
to sign and publish it. So I'm working very hard to pitch this to President Biden, to educate his lawyers and educate his team, and if we can convince them that this is the right thing to do, I think she'll sign and publish it and we will have a twenty th amendment. Now why does that matter. It matters because if we had an equal rights amendment, Dobbs would be invalid. Explain to us, job says, women of reproductive years do not have a right to privacy, and therefore
they don't have a right to reproductive care. If states say it's illegal, men have a right to privacy, and men have a right to reproductive care all across this country. And if you don't allow women to have it, but you do allow men to have it, that is unequal treatment. And so an equal rights amendment would deem Dobbs invalid.
So interesting and such a great idea.
So so we're just working it.
We're working to President Biden.
We're working it. We're trying to So I saw President, I saw, I have talked to Anita. I gave her all my briefs.
I'm going to find Anita and and be like, you got to publish.
The r Yes.
So I saw President Biden at Stonewall. We did a big thing about the Stonewall in monument Yes, And I pitched him in the photo line. I had a full thirty seconds and he loved this argument, and he said, so you want me to make a big deal about this. I was like, yes, I want you to call on the archives published. And he loved it. So if I can convince his team, maybe.
You know, this is how it gets done.
I think so, because if the archive is signs and published, it automatically becomes a twenty eighth amendment. I bet people will sue. It'll go up to the Supreme Court. Maybe within six months, maybe within a year, who knows. But the truth is that the law supports signing and publishing. There's no requirement that these amendments need to be done quickly. So in fact, Article five doesn't even give Congress the
ability to set a deadline. And the twenty seven Amendment took two hundred and three years to sign and publish, so Trump's lawyer's argument that it took two is invalid. It is invalid.
It's funny because it's like, my mom is this feminist author, Erka Jong, and she worked really hard on this. This was like one of the things that in the seventies was one of the great promises.
Well, it took them time to get state by state. It takes a while to get thirty eight states, and we didn't get it done right away. Congress wanted it done in seven years, but Congress didn't have the authority to put that deadline on. At number one and number two, the twenty seven Amendment took two hundred and three years, So it's not unusual for these amendments to take longer than you think.
One of the things that's happening at this convention is there's a feeling that women are finally at the table.
I think that's right, and I think that the speakers that Kamala has chosen to be part of this convention a lot of women, a lot of young women, a lot of people of color. It's a very diverse and exciting and invigorating and energizing convention, a lot of young speakers. I mean, I liked AOC for my own state. She did a great job. Or speech was fabulous, and then Jasmine Crockett was excellent. I loved Angela also Brooks, she did a great job. I thought Lisa Blunt Rochester was electrifying.
I've been really happy with the people that she's lifted up to give them speaking roles and a lot of new voices, which I really appreciate.
So one of the things things that the Senate that is sort of upsetting to me about the Senate is there has only ever been I think we have the three black women senators. This is now Senator Butler is the third, correct, okay, and so we Senator Harris was the second.
And Illinois Senator Braun.
Was Carol Moseley Brown was the first. So we've only had three, right, which is insane.
We get two more.
We could get two.
More with Angela Austin Brooks and so that in a way seems like a big deal.
And I think it is a big deal.
Yeah, yeah, And I mean this news set of class is gonna be great. We also have Andy Kim coming in from New Jersey Kim, so we're getting a lot more.
We had Andy Kim right after he announced.
I was proud of him for announcing when he did, and he had a lot of guts to do that, and that's being rewarded.
And he had to really run against them New Jersey Machine.
Yeah, but things can happen. It's amazing when things start to change.
It's funny because it's like Republicans are so mad about Harris.
They just don't know how to be blast but they're left.
They're mad and chaotic and confused and unable, like they don't know what to say and how to say it. It's quite shocking, actually, But if you just remember Trump was so vitriolic against women and women of color during his presidency. I think all the nasty tweets he sent about women and how vicious he was, particularly towards women of color. I just think he can't handle it. Yeah, I just think he can't handle it. Like I think it's like exploding his brain. So, who's the best candidate
to run against Trump? Kamala Harris. It's like, because by nature, she's exploding his head.
I can't imagine a candidate raising millions of dollars the energy.
She's creators instantaneously.
It seems to me that a lot of why she was so undermined was because she's a black woman. How can we as white women elevate Black women? How can we be.
Like allies in the way that we need to be?
Well?
I think in this moment in time, we should leave it all on the field for Kamala.
I mean, we can.
Show our allieship by our actions, our words, our deeds, our blood, our sweat, our tears between now and election day, like we can show the American people that we want a woman president and we want Kamala Harris to be
that first woman president. We can through our actions, show that we believe in her leadership, that we believe in her ability, and that we are going to do everything we can to make sure when we know in love is registered to vote, is voting, and that nobody gets to stay home, nobody gets to sit on their hands, nobody gets to do nothing. I mean, like Michelle Obama said, just do something.
Just do something.
And what I loved about Michelle's speech was that she told Kamala's story in the most powerful, loving, supportive way possible and coming from her perspective, it was beautiful, yeah, and empowering. I thought it was remarkable.
So much of the political writing about this era right now has been people saying that the Bidens and the Obamas don't like each other, and that this one and then that one don't like each other. And Biden was and you know, during Biden's speech, he's sad. He actually said, this was my decision. No one made this decision.
So you know what's so great about that?
Yeah? So great.
So Barack Obama trusts the vice presidency to Joe Biden. Yeah,
Joe Biden trusts the vice presidency to Kamala Harris. But when given the choice of who should be the next president, Biden was all in for Kamala And that one action alone made a huge difference, because when the President of the United States says, I believe Kamala Harris is the best candidate and should be the next president, it closed the door on the five or six, seven or eight candidates that were waiting in the wings to jump in to
create some mini primary. And it was instantaneous. Every single one of them endorsed her within forty eight, which created unity. And the unity has created momentum, and the momentum has created excitement, and this excitement has created electricity, and electricity is creating a will to win that I've never seen before. I've never seen this level of all in by everyone so early, so aggressively, so happily. Yeah, I mean all I see is happy warriors everywhere I go, and I
think it matters. And the other speech that really hit me was Hillary's for Hillary again, like this is a passing of the torch. Joe Biden passed the torch to Kamala. Hillary Clinton passed the torch to Kamala. And for the woman who we expected to be the first woman president to say, the first woman president will not be me, it will be her, will be Kamala Harris showed so much grace, so much kindness, so much wisdom. I was
so proud of her because it takes courage. It takes courage for anyone to walk away from power and also to walk away from a dream. But we saw both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton do that in this convention, and I was in tears. I was so grateful for Hillary's grace and courage in that moment was I thought it was beautiful.
Thank you, Senator Jilli Brown, Thank you.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be?
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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 episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly Jong Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, So please watch it and.
Spread the word.
Keith Ellison is the Attorney General of Minnesota.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Thank you, Molly. Good to see you again. How have you been been good?
What is going on? How is being attorney general?
Well?
I hear there's a Democratic convention going on as a rumor around here anyway, but it.
Feels like it's like this convention is like the low key theme as Minnesota.
Well, Minnesota is a awesome place. Minnesota is a very fun place to live. Minnesota. We value education, we value people. Minnesota is the home of Hubert H.
Humphrey.
He passed one of the first human rights ordinances in America.
Hubert H.
Humphrey in nineteen forty eight said that we have to walk out of the dark night of states rights into the bright sunshine of human rights.
And then you know, to do that again, I think again.
And then Minnesota is a good place. And this is my adopt at home. I was born in Detroit, Michigan. Love Detroit too, but I like staying in Minnesota. My kids, all four of my kids are born there, met my wife there. You know, it's a good place. I recommend it, but it's not a perfect place. And we got problems we got to solve.
You guys have passed like a lot of really interesting progressive legislation. Sure did stuff that I don't know how progressive it is in my mind, but I mean I think it's normal human rights stuff like feeding hungry children paid leave.
Sure, but I'm curious, does that have an effect on the crime well in your state?
I would say, no, Minnesota is relatively safe place. I mean it certainly there's enough crime to keep US prosecutors in business. But you know, if you compare red states and blue states, they're way more dangerous than us, right, and so I'd say.
But look, if you ask some of the downstream effects of this progressive legislation in your state.
Good questions.
So I believe that if you have kids who can go get a meal at school, even if they're poor kids or extremely working class and hard pressed, then sometimes those kids the only place you're going to get a good meal is in school. And so that means they're going to come to school, and that's going to lower a school absenteeism. It'll raise a chance to learn some stuff, maybe join a team, maybe join the band, getting to a play, find your passion, and that helps.
You stay out of trouble. Right there.
We do know.
Look, we have more absenteeism than we want.
We have not bounced back from the pandemic numbers, but because of the universal school meals, we have some good numbers and we have reason to be hopeful. I mean, you know, so that's just one thing, you know what I mean, There's so many others. Child tax credit that we passed.
You have a child tax credit that's a state talk, yes, So explain to us how that works. Because the federal child tax state income text despite how much Jade Evans pretends he loves it. Actually expired because the Senate could not get the vote.
So you got to he vote on that.
He didn't vote. He didn't go to the vote.
Oh well, so you know what they used to call that. They used to call that taking a Mississippi walk. Yeah, that means there's legislation you don't want to vote on, so you're conveniently not on the floor to vote, which is your job to vote.
I used to be in Congress for twelve years.
The only job you have is to vote, show your backside up and vote.
Yeah.
And if you can't do that, you're not meeting the minimum requirements of the of the job, right, and so that's him for you. So you know, so you have stated, you know, Minnesota does have state income tax, but because of the Child Tax Credit, you know, that helps families that are trying to take care of their families and their kids and then improves child family income and reduces child poverty.
So it's very important.
And one of the ideas in Project twenty twenty five is to dismantle and ultimately end.
The Department of Education.
Right what you started by Jimmy Carter, Right, Department of Education does pelgrants, sure, some other things that provide money for college for the people who are in the sort of poorest group.
Of American Absolutely true.
Would you talk about what it would mean to dismantle the Department of Education?
Well, I can talk about pragmatically what it would mean, but let me first just mention what it would mean symbolically. Yeah, it would mean that we are shutting down the institution
which provides knowledge to people. We say knowledge is power. Well, if you don't have any education department, then there's still power, but it's shifted from one place to another, right, it's you know, and look, it's real hard to control people when they know what's going on, and it's real hard to make people hate others when they know something about those people.
But if I don't know nothing about.
You, it's easy for me to believe that, oh, you have poverty in your community because you're just lazy and don't want to work. If I don't know nothing about you, I can jump to all kinds of ignorant conclusions.
It's about who you are and what you represent. So I'll just say that.
But you know, look, the Department of Education is doing important things regarding Title I, which is making sure that low income kids, kids with disabilities get a fair shot educationally. Aprotment of educations are very important and making sure that we have equal it's a national it's an institution with national purview.
So if you just completely.
Localize education, you know, the product that a kid might get in Lowndes County, Alabama versus what some kids going to get in Hinnipey County of Minnesota.
Is just extremely different.
And why in the world would you want to, you know, create an environment of inequality unless your.
Goal was in equality.
So you know, look, these people, I tell you, Molly, if I just be straight up with it, I think they want to return Jim Crow.
Yeah, I think that's what they want to do.
They're not haven't yet said that, but it seems likely that at some point someone's going to admit it.
Yeah, you're you're all mad about DEI, right, keeps you up at night for some reason. Yeah, I mean, even though we really haven't created equal opportunity in America, you're mad at the few opportunities that have been created. So you know, and by the way, we're not mad about legacy inherited wealth. You can go to Harvard. If mom and dad or grandpa went there, and if they build a wingy, you know, you can go there.
You can be dumb as a.
Post, yeah, really dumb and have bad grades.
You do have to give like five million dollars.
Yeah, as long as you got the five million, Yeah, you can come there. But if you're a smart kid and you don't and you're just trying to get there on merit.
No, forget not so much.
But then, but the other thing is that, I mean, the one really good thing about this country is that we have a lot of really good colleges. We do, and we have a really good community college system. They do that throws people to better colleges.
I sure, I sure believe that is true.
And you know, my two older brothers both went to community college and one of them is a physician today. Yeah, and the other one is a not he's a he's a lawyer and a preacher.
Yeah.
So you know, give me a shout out to me, make a shout out to Leonard doctor Leonard Ellison yea and redend Bryan Ellison, my two brothers, two good guys.
You have this incredible vice president who is your governor and now is running for visas.
I thought you're talking about the other one.
I want to talk.
About you, the guy from your state, the guy he's a little less famous.
Yeah, and so you know what, And I'm glad you want to talk about him because the Republicans are doing They're in a mad rush to try to define him in a negative way.
By the way, they were not able to define her.
Now.
I mean, I tell you so many times people said to me, it's the next three days are going to define everything. They are trying to define her. They wanted to find her. They weren't able to to define her.
Yeah, well so she's smarter than that, both of them put together.
Five times.
Yeah, you know.
And I want to define him because I think because he looks like a Midwestern dad, and Republicans want those vhotos.
You know, I have a whole thought about that.
I don't know if we might take more than two minutes, but so and the Republicans have been talking a lot about masculinity. Democrats we don't talk that much about it because it's.
Like stupid, I'm a boy or a girl whatever.
Yeah, but to them, like you know, you got Josh Hawley and jd. Vance all this stuff, and they're also trying to define feminininity too. And Tim Walls is a crack shot, wins the shooting competition, yet he says what's more important is protecting people from gun violence. Tim Walls football coach, the most macho, he man sport we got. He's actually damn good at it and knows how to
inspire young men to win. And not only that, these men in their thirties and forties were in their ball jerseys on stage and I don't know, see, I don't know, so like maybe my wife doesn't even know this about me. But the most electric joyful time in my life was when I was sixteen years old running across the football field into the end zone. I am sixty one and
I remember that. And anybody who's ever played high school for I don't care if you played college football and pro football, you remember being playing for free with your friends in your neighborhood. And that is like a you know, I don't know, Well, girls don't play football, so that's not a memory they have. They might remember being at the game, but that is a very male thing, you know, And he is able to he's the man on that and neither one of them are what did Trump ever do?
Trump is a bone spur get to avoid Vietnam. He might have been a good athlete. Nobody's ever heard about that.
JD.
Vance, You know, I don't know.
I mean, he was a marine, but we know he sat in the desk and wrote articles stuff.
Nothing wrong with that, yeah, but you know.
But but I guess it's kind of hard to describe in a way. But Tim Walls checks all these masculine boxes and still his concept of masculinity is to protect, support. Their concept of masculinity is to dominate. So in their mind, masculinity means you have you're a billionaire, and you boss everybody around and do whatever you want and touch women who do.
Big scary trucks.
Right.
So his idea is to go on a ride with his daughter at the fair. His idea is to support his his son. His idea is to support his football players even into adulthood, and to be able to have the admiration of his fellow soldiers and their idea. And they think the soldiers are suckers and and and they only and they only support people who don't get captured. And I mean, we got to explore the differing concept of manhood that are on display right here.
We don't talk about it. On the dim side.
We should, but we're kind of leaving that discussion because there are a lot of men who are kind of like wondering what's going on cause, you know, forty years ago, being male, if you could pick up something and she can't pick it up, then you're the head of the family and she's not.
Right today, your wife probably does.
Make more money than you because she probably smarter than you, because you know, I mean, you know, and that's making and that's making a lot of guys like, where do I fit in here? I mean you you look at your average law school graduation class. De valedictorian is probably a female and most of the class is probably female.
College or college.
Yeah, and so a lot of guys are like, where do I fit in here?
And Trump is exploiting that malaise, that that anxiety, and so Tim Wallas is kryptonite to them.
Yes, Ron Widen is the senior senator from Oregon.
Welcome back to back politics, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden.
What a treat are you getting me?
A treat is mine. It is my treat to have you on my podcast. You did a lot of interesting stuff with taxes this year.
Talk to me.
So the differences could not be greater between the wonderful woman that we've nominated to be President of the United States.
And Donald Trump.
Yeah, you know, Donald Trump is basically trying to claber the working class and that's with all these tariffs yeh, which are really taxes. So yeah, if a worker in Coos Bay, Oregon, or anywhere else you know, is buying a car or paying for food or clothing, they basically get clabbered so that the people in the one tenth of one to one hundredth up at the top are
going to get more tax breaks. And what we're trying to do is make sure that everybody understand what's on offer and is basically clabbering working class people in order to give gifts and people at the top.
So, but you have also done some really interesting legislation with AI tech and taxes, right, so explain to us some of that also. But before you do that, I want you to talk about how the Trump tax cut is going to expire, and some of what is happening behind the scenes is actually about taxes and for a lot of rich people. This election is actually about taxes.
There's no question about it. That's the big pocketbook, you know issue.
People say, well, you know he did good things in this term or that term. That's not what this is about. This is about the fact. And he said it. He has fundraisers and the like with the oil companies and the like. Here's what I'm gonna.
Do for you.
Yeah.
I think what we're doing now is pushing back in a way that shows where our values are. For example, vice President's been talking about food prices. Right, I'm going to be getting on a plane flying home. We are molly looking at the biggest food and grocery merger in the history of the United States, right, And that's Kroger and Albertson's. And the fact is the market is so consolidated that in many areas there's not much competition. So you pay four dollars for a gallon of milk or
ten dollars for a pound of beef. And I said, when the far right said the Vice president's talking about price control, they said, hold on, We democrats are for markets.
But when the.
Market is working, we're going to make sure there's some guardrails to protect the consumers.
So that's what we're talking about.
To anti trust. You got a competition.
One of the things that the Biden administration has done that's made them very unpopular with wealthy people is more.
Anti trust regulation. Can you talk about that?
Sure?
I mean, in sector after sector, we're losing choices, for example in Oregon, and I hope this is something that you'll see the executive branch, you know, take on. We're seeing tremendous consolidation and pharmacies. You know, the grocery merger also is a pharmacy merger, and the big pharmacies are basically you know, coming together and reducing choices. That meshes with the PBMs. These pharmaceutical benefit managers get this, We're going to spend more than four trillion dollars on healthcare
this year. They're like three hundred and thirty million of US. You divide three hundred and thirty million into four trillion dollars plus and you can send every family of four in America for a check now fifty thousand dollars and say here, get some healthcare. And where the money's going is these middlemen.
You are a policy guy. I am obsessed with tech regulation. I think tech company is basically killed newspapers and now are just trying to make content any cheap way they can.
What can you guys do to enact tech regulation?
Well, it seems to me the most important thing is to make sure that the big guys, you know, I mean look at Google. You know Google's being broken up in effect. I mean, you're seeing big changes. But I want to make sure that the little guys, who's the horse I've always been riding, the big guys can take care of themselves. Get this in one of my tech bills. Mark Zuckerberg would be in jail now for lying.
About privacy issues.
Right.
So I have never, as a guy who's always involved in tech policy, people say, oh, you know, Ron's a really good guy, but the big guys are benefiting. I have no horse in that game.
But for the little guys.
You know, the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter? How did that get out? It got out because we had a platform in order to give those people voices they couldn't have gotten anywhere else.
Should Tittock be banned?
I like what we're doing in our legislation, which is saying it's got.
To be American right, got to be sold to an American conglomerate.
Thank you.
Senator Austin Davis is the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania.
Welcome to Fast Politics. Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, Austin Davis.
Thank you for having me. It's great to do.
Pennsylvania is like pretty much the whole ballgame it is. So what does that look like? And what did Democrats need to do? You are the lieutenant governor, you have one state level. You know what we're dealing with. Tell us what we're doing.
Yeah, you know, I.
Think Democrats need to one show up everywhere, not just big cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We need to go to small communities all across Pennsylvania and listen to voters and make the case on how we're going to make our economy better, how we're going to make our community safer, and how we're going to create laders of opportunity for everyone to live the American dream.
So explain to our listeners what it looks like Pennsylvania like.
So, you know, I'd like to say Pennsylvania, I think is the most representative of America. We've got big cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, vast amounts of rurallands, big wealth suburbs like outside of Philly, but also small towns like Erie, Lancaster or Harrisburg. And so you know, you got to
make sure that you're talking everywhere. And sometimes Democrats need to go to places where it's not comfortable to be a Democrat, ye and make the case on how we're going to make the folks that live there their lives better as well. And I think President Harris has been doing that. She just did a bus tour in western Pennsylvania before she came to the convention.
But she went to shots, right, aren't there two different?
Oh? Sheets?
Sheet?
She went to sheets, So she was appropriate on the western part of the state.
She went to sheet.
Did show that Jesse is shaking his head because I have mispronounced sheets.
Go on, they're sheets in Wahwah.
So she was in the western side of the state, so totally appropriate to go to sheets.
When she's in the eastern side, she'll go to wah Wah Okay.
But yeah, So she did a tour in right outside of Pittsburgh, the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Aliquippa and Beaver and Beaver and Rochester, small steel towns, and this was going to take just going and talking about her vision for the economy, how she's going to address the issues that everyday Americans are facing. And she has always been a champion for working class Americans. So I think part of us is reintroducing her and the work she's done throughout the course of her career.
Sort of what is the landscape like, jobs wise? What are your industries?
So, agriculture is our number one industry in Pennsylvania.
Agriculture.
We've done actually an economic bell strategy that focuses on robotics, healthcare, agriculture, robotics, and biotech is kind of becoming a robotics in Pittsburgh because of carnegiemail and in biotech in Philadelphia. So those are kind of the five areas.
What legislation have you guys passed that has been really popular?
You know? So we have we've done all sides.
Rebuilding that ninety.
Five in two weeks. That was kind of a big deal.
But by the way, I think, like fixing that road, people just can't even believe that anyone could do that.
Yeah, the sad part is people just don't expect that government can work for them. Or really solve any of our biggest problems. And I think when people saw that it can work, they were like, wow, yeah, I mean, look, it's not it wasn't groundbreaking like rebuilding a bridge, but it was the two week it was the two week period that we were able to get it done so efficiently. But you know, we've done a lot. We've put millions of dollars in workforce development to address our workforce challenges.
The Governor and I have made the largest investments in public education in our commonwealth's history to make sure every young person gets a quality education. I've personally taken on gun violence in our communities. We're staying up the first office at gun Violence Prevention in Pennsylvania. We're spending forty five million dollars to make sure everyone has the right
to be safe and feel saved in our communities. And we've passed universal breakfast so that we can stamp out hunger among kids in Pennsylvania.
So we've made a.
Lot of good work in a year and a half and still got a lot of good stuff to do.
Competing with tim Walls.
We are competing with it.
We were competing with tim Walls, and you know, what competition for stamping out hunger among young people. That's a good competition we should be engaging in.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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.