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 RFK Junior says the US COVID response was the worst in the world. Hm, we have such a great show for you today. MSNBC's own Stephanie Rule stops by to talk to us about the disappointing job numbers and what they could mean to the Trump administration.
Then we'll talk to the Brennan Center's own Dan Weiner about the congressional stock band that everybody wants but we seem to not be able to get. But first the stories everyone is talking.
About Somali As we know, the Trump got some bad job numbers. But I need to teach you about numbers. And I'm going to bring in a professor. His name is Rep. Randy Fine.
Ah the best Randy Fine.
He's doed for being such an awful human. Even Marjorie Taylor Greed lectures about death. What's listened to this fellow tell us about what's going on in the world coming out.
The August jobs record and a little of our who knows what time it is anymore, it's a million o'clock on seeing at New Central. It will be coming out shortly and we will bring it to everyone when it does. Are you going to believe the numbers?
I'm going to I'm going to look at the numbers.
Look, the people who put these numbers together are human, and they're fallible, and they make mistakes. And if you go back and you look how these numbers always e was they make mistage?
It wasn't.
Yeah, it wasn't that they make mistakes. The reason that the President kicked out the commissioner of their of labor Stations was he said that they were they were faking it, they were cooking the books, which there's no evidence of that.
So do you think when then, when the numbers, when the numbers are always wrong in one direction, you have reason to be suspect. And so here's my understand that what I can tell you is.
When businesses respond and give the information and submit and respond to the ask from the Labor Department, then they can't adjust what they have. It's like I get more information, we can adjust the numbers. That's been happening from the beginning of time. Yes, there has been more variable that's for a lot of reasons which they say fewer businesses are actually responding to these surveys, but that doesn't mean they're cooking the books.
Well, I think that when there's problems with methodology, sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's not. But when the numbers are always do you think why the direction? There's a reason to have I think the methodologies were problematic, And we see this in all kinds of things, where numbers always tend to benefit the left, and when the facts come out they don't anymore.
And so I think the president, yes, the facts have a liberal bias.
Where have I heard that before? There's a reason for that.
We have heard that before.
And Randy fine, and ladies and gentlemen, Randy fine. All I'm going to say is that the unemployment rate for the youngs is ten point five percent, which is not great.
Yeah, that is a really really bad sign for breaking this social contract with our youth.
Turns out you guys shouldn't have voted for Trump.
Yeah.
And well, if he thought they responded badly when they got taught by Andrew Tate, just imagine how badly they're going to respond when they were told to get a degree and it means nothing.
Oh, I'm not going to blame education for this.
I'm not blaming education.
I'm blaming the breaking of the social contract by the corporations who aren't hiring them because they're now useless and we told them to get that degree and now it's worthless.
It's not education's fault. It's a corporate America's.
Fault either way. Chicken egg whatever not good. But you know what else is not good?
Jesse Kennon, Well, I have to say a staffer at the DOJ saying that they're going to take out all the Republican names of the Epstein files brought to us by Conservative Little what do we even call him?
James O'Keefe.
Before we go to get to this story, I just want to point out there have just been a couple of times this week Thomas Massey mtg Ran Paul saying we shouldn't bomb ships if we don't know who's in them. Three different really truly horrendous humans, all of whom made a lot of sense to me this week, a lot. So I just want to say, before we get to this story, this is a person, James O'Keefe. He got fired from Project Veritas. He does now the James O'Keeffe
project or whatever. This is not someone you want to be elevating and yet continue.
So he basically did a honeypot, which for those who don't know that turbo, it's like he gave a attractive girl camera and she flirted with a guy who tried to impress her and said that they're gonna only leave the liberals of the Epstein files they release, which yes, pretty hilarious. Exactly what all of us could have predicted what happened months and months ago.
Incredible. Basically, he says to her, we have a plan, and the plan is pretty much what all of us thought. And by the way, this is not some yahoo what's his title.
Acting Deputy Chief of the DOJ's Office of Enforcement Operations.
Yeah, so this guy is in a position to do such a thing. And he says if they're released in any way, it's going to be very redacted, which that makes sense. They'll redact every Republican or conservative person in the files. That doesn't make sense, leave all the liberal democratic people in the files. Joseph Schnitt, acting director of the DOJ's Office of Enforcement Organization, says in a video.
Yeah, so look forward to that. Sorry, Bill Clinton anyway, So after Robert F. Kennedy's, I would put that the top five most disastrous testimonies I've ever seen Molley where you reckon.
I think he could do worse, by the way, the times when Kennedy did the worst, or the times when members of Congress were careful and drew them out, like, for example, Republican Senator John Cassidy, who has clearly I mean, look, he was the needed vote for Kennedy, but he is a doctor. He's a gastroinrologist, so he knows that he fucked up big time. He starts with this questioning and he says, do you think that Donald Trump should win a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed? And let me
tell you all Donald Trump wants is his fucking prize. Right, He's like the mango god dictator of our country. He has more prouder than any president ever, and all the man wants is a prize. This I could not relate to more. I mean, I am not a dictator, but I really want a prize. So here he says I want this prize. Senator Bill Cassidy gets him going, says, do you think he deserves a prize?
Ourf cases.
Absolutely, then Cassidy is like I thought vaccines were bad, you know, and RF cake can't get out of it. Those were the most effective question I thought the least effective questioning, and it made the rounds on the internet. But there was one a video of a Democratic senator just being like, you're a Charlottean Like. I don't think that's as effective as getting him to really talk himself into a corner. I think it makes more sense to
do that than to just yell at him. Mark Warner got really mad at him and started yelling at him too, and Barrasso, who is number two Senate Whip said, and he's an orthopedic surgeon. I mean, this is the thing, like you have all these doctors who signed on to this. They did this to themselves and to us. I don't have a lot of knockus for this crew, but I still think it was pretty interesting watching them just take him apart.
Yeah, I agree to Maria Kentwell and Elizabeth Warren really did a great job with Yeah.
See, I thought Warren did a better job than can't Well. Can't Well was just like.
She got him on a few things that I thought were good. But yes, I agree that Warren was better.
Yeah, can't. Well, it's good, but like catch him in the lies, don't tell him he sucks.
We know he sucks well.
Regardless, his red faced performance of breathing weird and talking strangely has him on very thin ice, apparently with Republican centers. According to sources at the Hill, they're telling mister Trump that RFK juniors on thin ice.
Buddy, you better watch it.
Yeah.
I'm sure Donald Trump as he fires, I'm sure he's listening real hard to the people who gave away all their power.
Yeah.
Yeah, But at the same time, Trump does have that preservationist instinct that if RFK does become a liability for him, I don't think he's a long for this world. It's just more right now he thinks he's a benefit. Come well, as I said, Donald Trump thinks. I don't believe he.
Thinks that, right.
I mean, look, if he fires RFK, which he absolutely should, and by the way, Bernie was out there last week with it obed in the Times saying that he should be forced to resign, which I was so impressed that he did that, and that was what democratic leadership should be all over.
We should have his doing that, we should have Schumer doing that.
Yeah.
Also to that point, he was everywhere doing that. He made every type of video. The YouTube did really well. He knew how to play that media ecosystem, unlike the leadership right now.
Yeah, I don't understand what's happening with the leadership. But yeah, so till us everybody in the world. Everybody in the world freaking out about this.
But I don't know. We'll see what happens.
Look, if Trump fires Kennedy, which he absolutely, one hundred percent, unequivocally should, he's going to have those angry Maha women making videos about him.
We'll see.
So, Malli, it's not looking good for that discharge petition over the Epstein files.
What do you see in here?
So basically there are two more positions that are going to be filled. The last time I talked to them, they still thought they had the votes. I don't know I can ask them again.
Well, as of this taping, it's not looking so hot.
I mean, the only one I see changing tactics there is Paulina Luna, but it's certainly possible that it won't get through. I mean, the good news is that the women can put together their own list. I mean they can and Marjorie Taylor Green can go to converse and read it. I mean, there's a lot of corruption happening here, and the fact that Trump doesn't want the Epstein stuff released seems in.
My mind kind of like a big towel.
Steph Rule is the host of MSNBC's The Eleventh Hour. Watch Steph Rule at the upcoming MSNBC Live twenty five This Is Who We Are event on October eleventh in New York City. Stephanie Rall, Welcome to Path Politics.
I'm excited to be here. Majong. You are on my mind all summer as I learned majong this summer, and I'm like, just like Mollie, feel like like she wants to do like a Mazong thing that their name.
Yeah, listen, I would a like to learn how to play majong.
And yes, so okay, I'm gonna tell you. This was the summer I turned old, I learned majong, I learned canasta, and I took my son to college. So like, I am like officially a golden girl and I'm here for it. I'm just saying that, all right.
So besides those many skills. You have other skills, and I'm not very good at any of those yet just so good.
And when you meet a woman who's really good at majong revere her because she's the smarty pants, I'm not one of them. Well, I go back to business excited to learn.
So today Ken Donald Trump fire the head of Bureau and Labor Statistics.
Again.
No, what Donald Trump and how our Leutnik are doing now are basically saying, don't pay attention to these numbers. Six months from now, a year from now, as Donald Trump said, when the genius palaces are built, And like, I don't know what a genius palace is, but I'm definitely putting that sign above my bedroom door. From now on, you are now entering the genius palace. No, now, they're just moving the goalpost. Because remember Donald Trump was going
to lower grocery prices day one. Everything was going to be booming. It was going to be an m and a bonanza. You were just going to see business and building investments coming, YadA, YadA, YadA. None of that's happened yet. One of the main reasons that hasn't happened is because Donald Trump has led his tower for Donald Trump is now involving himself in all sorts of private industries. And what happens that freezes up business because nobody knows what's
coming next. Because as opposed to what Republicans swear that they are free market capitalists, you now have a president who's directly getting involved in all sorts of businesses here and abroad. So businesses don't know what to do or how to spend their money, and they're not investing. Okay, So here we are, nine months in, we're getting a jobs report that's not strong. We're revisions to previous months. They're lower and lower and lower, and core inflation is
above three percent. So Donald Trump is going to get what he wants. Investors are going to get what they want, and they're going to get a rate cut. But they're not getting a ray cut because insallation's down. We're getting a rate cut because we have many, many signs that the economy is slowing. So here you have in America. Employers are not hiring, employers are not raising wages, and things are costing a lot of money below stagflation. This is America.
So let's i So let's talk about that. The reason that they didn't want to cut the rates until now was because of the worry of inflation. Is that no longer a worry It sounds like it's not, or is it just so such a dire explain why they're doing it?
Still a worry. But the Fed has a dual mandate to make sure the economy is growing and to keep inflation in check. It's not one or the other. And this is the thing about investors and Donald Trump. Investors want a rate cut, and they also want a stable economy, right, And I shouldn't say that they want a growing economy. They want a strong economy. And it's not that we have a bad economy.
We don't.
We have a good economy, but things are weakening because of Donald Trump's trade war, and you still have this pesky inflation situation. So we're going to get the rate cut, but not necessarily in the way that Donald Trump wants. And you know, just yesterday when Bill Poulti who runs the housing agency that tipped off Donald Trump claiming that Lisa Cooke, the FED governor, committed fraud. He's now sort
of planting the seeds that will listen. Jay Powell hasn't fired Lisa Cook yet and that could end up being caused for him to get fired. It's like Donald Trump just did set at this point that he desperately wants to fire j Powell. And it's not for malpractice. It's about control. Since Donald Trump took off as this second term, it's how can I bend every cabinet member, every industry, every leader to the whims of what I want, every
country to the whims of what I want? And Jay Powell hasn't done it, and he is dead set on firing him. It makes no sense because Jay Powell's term is done in nine months. He's going regardless. But it's like Donald Trump needs to win this one, and Scott Besant has warned the President, do not do this. It is not a good idea to fire on him because you know, one of the core tenants of American exceptionalism
is our central bank being independent. Because Molly, every single politician who lives on short termism, which they all do because they all need to get elected every four years, would say, let's cut rates down to zero.
Because rates are zero, we're gonna buy houses, We're gonna borrow, borrow, barrow, and spend, spend, spend, But politicians who just worry about the short term don't have to think about the big picture, long term impacts.
That's what the FED has to do, and that's where the fed's independence is crucial. And this is the first time in our lifetimes we are now hearing FED governors talked about like this one's on my team, this one's on your team. That's not how the FED operates. It was never like the Supreme Court, right, and the Supreme Court was never supposed to be like this.
Very correct, But explain to us if you lower interest rates, what is the danger.
The things are gonna heat up too quickly right that everyone is gonna start spending and everyone's gonna start borrowing, like, oh my gosh, my credit card rates nothing, I'm gonna I'm gonna spend, I'm gonna spend. I'm gonna spend when the under when we're not when the underlying economy isn't strong enough, And the risk in doing that is bad for us across the board. And it's not how the markets view things, because if you were in a business, you want to borrow as cheaply as you can all the time.
The tariffs are inflationary because things are more expensive, and they were.
Like much much.
I mean, our tariff rate is really really high. I mean it's the highest of any in the.
De for no reason. Because let's remember, tariffs aren't a good or a bad thing. Tariffs are a tool. And it is totally fair and accurate to say that China has unfair trading practices, which is why the idea to put together a coalition of the United States and ally nations to work together to figure out a way to prevent or stop China from doing this, which is why they put together the Trans Specific Partnership towards the end of the Obama administration and Trump said, no way, HOSEI,
We're not doing this. But instead of us working with other countries, Donald Trump went into office and one of the main reasons he likes tariffs is it's very powerful for him. Right, this is what gives him the chance to be a kingmaker where other countries come to him and say please or don't do this, like trade is so important to us. It's where CEO after CEO is going to the White House hat in hand looking for an exemption.
Right.
I am sure you watched last night those tech leaders show up for that dinner at the White House, none of whom are being intellectually honest with the President, because I'm sure in their mind they can't be right if you're Tim Cook, and you could say, how could Tim Cook of Apple go to the White House give Donald
Trump the gold phone tap dance form? Because he has a business to run, and in putting on his dog and pony show for the President, he avoided rippling tariffs on his company, and so one would say Tim Cook did the right thing for his company. But the question is are these business leaders doing the right thing for their companies and their country because they should be thought of as these leaders in society and culture. They're saying, hold on, is this going to help our economy as
a whole? And they're watching the President and what he's doing with the FED, and they know that it's dangerous, and they're not saying anything because they're playing a game of survival. And I get it. They know the President will target you if you speak out against him in any way.
It seems like we have a permission structure or we're going down road where nobody says the truth. So you don't have business leaders saying the truth, You don't have members of the FED saying the truth because the don't want to get fired.
You don't have you just sort of So where's things like the Business Roundtable? Like the Business round Table's purpose, right, is to bring business leaders together, is to work with government, is to work with the administration and say this is what is happening in the business universe, this is what would help us, this is what would hurt us. This is a real economy, this is the real labor market.
And they're not saying anything. And it's not that different from if you think about when the president first went after law firms. It was not after you know, DEI practices. He was going after law firms that worked with people that he perceived to be his enemies. Yeah, just like going after university. Not about fighting anti Semitism, right, it's about doing what Donald Trump wants and Donald Trump being
in charge. I get that's what he wants. But by not just standing up, not not really fighting but standing up for what's right, everyone's hurting themselves. Right If all those law firms would have said, you can't take Paul Weiss down, We're going to stand lock arms and stand together. But instead, as soon as he went after Paul Weiss, all of Paul Weiss's competitors said great and called Paul Weiss's clients and said, hello, we'd like to be your
We'd like to be your new law firm. In the same way Molly that that early in the Trump administration, when what was it he wanted to kick the AP out because they were unwilling to call it the Gulf of America. What could have happened. All the other news outlets could such a good point, all the other news outlets could have said, and you're going to do this to the AP, We're not going to show up for
the next week. And this isn't my idea. A senior administration official from Trump's first term called me that week and said to me, can I tell you Donald Trump's favorite hour of the day. It's the hour that he's speaking to the press. And there was one week the press said we're not going to show up. He wouldn't like it. And I get the fear that if your seat is empty, then the White House is going to fill it with someone else. The White House is going
to put another right wing influence in there. And they might they're doing that, but Donald Trump doesn't just want the influencer who's going to say, mister President, when did you get great at being great? You look more handsome today than you did yesterday. The president wants the back and forth. The president wants the friction because the friction is what gets the headlines, not the person saying when
did you get great at being great? But in the world of survival and short termism that we all collectively live in, it's hard and it's scary.
No, I think that's absolutely right.
And the reality is the White House Press Association had a moment there where they could have done what they exist for and that didn't happen.
And I don't listen. I don't begrudge them. This is really hard. It's hard for people to cover this White House. It's hard for people to work with this White House.
Right.
Yeah, And while the President does consider himself to be pro business and pro growth, it's his way or the highway, and that's not something we've experienced in a modern America.
So the markets seem to be not I mean, I don't know what they're doing today, but I would love you to explain sort of what you think the market, the stock market, the bond market, if you're.
Seeing any kind of check. I think, first of all, when people keep seeing the market booming, saying, oh, the market likes I mean first, Trump said this week if we got out, if we got rid of the tariffs, markets would fall apart. We'd be a third world country.
That's one.
Not the case. Not the case, it's twofold. It's when we talk about the markets, we're not talking about all the Fortune five hundred companies out there. We're not talking
about all the public traded companies. At this point, you have seven giant mega companies that are really not affected by tariffs, they're not affected by immigration, that are so big and so valuable tech giants, and they're overweighted so much in the markets that that's what people look at right Like the power and the weight of Nvidia gets all of our attention, and we're ignoring the fact that John Deere is laying off people. Nike is telling us
what the tariffs are going to cause us. Walmart is warning what's happening to consumers or what's happening to prices. So you have to think about the fact that we're in this AI boom, that investors are flooding cash into any company that has any association or connection to AI, which is why there are folks out there that worry that we could be approaching an AI bubble like we did a dot com bubble. I'm not saying that we are,
but that theory is definitely out there. So you have that when it comes to the markets and the other side of the markets, they don't actually believe that Donald Trump will follow through with doing anything truly draconian.
Right.
The tariffs that we actually have, though they're crippling, their painful, they're not the fifty to sixty percent tariff that Donald Trump was threatening on that first Liberation Day, and it was I can't remember who came up with the term taco Trump always checking it out with theft with the barons someone. Investors across the board really believe that they believe that Donald Trump's The only evidence we've seen of a guardrail on him in his second term has been
market dropping. Has been the bond market knocking on his door and Scott Bessett running in and saying, mister President, I need to explain to you. When people lose faith in the US dollar and they lose faith in the fact that this isn't the safest, best place to invest, and that cracks. That's deficit. That's when Donald Trump backs off and says, oh, we're not gonna go with the tariffs, so we're gonna So there's a belief that he talks a big game and it's a huge headache, but at
the end he's not going to go through it. Which is why if I talked to ce who run actual companies with thousands and thousands of employees who have to make things, navigating Donald Trump is significantly harder. Because business
planning is very hard under Donald Trump. But if I talk to investors who can buy or sell an entire portfolio within the span of ten minutes they had to play with Donald Trump, they'd understand the volatility of the understanding, and they can make an entire They can make a
huge amount of money. But if you are running a company where you're planning, hiring, firing, building factories, expanding, investing in other countries, it's damn near impossible to do that under Donald Trump, especially as it relates to the tariffs, because they're on today, they're off tomorrow, and three years from now, when he's not president anymore, they're most likely not on so were you really going to invest billions of dollars in a long term project that might make
no sense just a few years from now exactly.
And also the bond market, I'd love you to just talk about, like there still is some of dollar abandonment, right, there's not your So that may not be showing up in the markets yet in the data.
Could and things could turn, but but it could and it could turn on a diame in a second. And we'll just try to make it as basic as possible. Right when we talk about the bottom market, we're talking about US treasuries and investors from around the world. That's
where they park their money. Right, even when there's a stock market disaster here, even when there's a subprime crisis here, that US dollar remains the reserve currency in part because we have an independent federal reserve, Right, don't believe me. Look at countries like Turkey, look at Greece, Look at Argentina, where you didn't have independent central banks, or where you couldn't trust the government data, the economic data, because politicians
were getting involved and they face dire consequences. But because for over one hundred years, we've had an independent federal reserve people say this is this, you know, the cleanest dirty shirt, you know, the safest place to put your money. But if suddenly those things are in question, it'll make it more difficult and less attractive to invest your dollars here in the United States.
And that will mean it will be more expensive to service our debt one hundred percent, right.
And and that's the thing that we have to remember about debt and deficits.
Here.
We don't even pay down the debt, right. All we do is service the interest. So compare that. Imagine if you had huge, gigantic, crippling credit card debt, and every month when you were paying your bill, you were never even considering chipping away at the principle. All you are ever doing is servicing the interest, which is what we do as the United States government. And what blows my mind is that maybe six months before Donald Trump won this election, I watched Scott Bessant, who was you know,
sort of in the in the like. Maybe he was an unofficial, maybe an official advice to the Trump campaign, I don't remember, but he was closely tied to the Trump campaign. I watched him speak at a conference and he was visibly angry and shaken at Joe Biden and the amount of government spending that went on during the Biden administration. And he basically said, I want to be
part of this next administration. And he wasn't being boastful, but you know, because he wanted to save America, felt like he felt like the fiscal clip was coming, spending was out of control, and doom was on the horizon. Well I barely hear him ever speaking about this. Why because debt and deficits are ballooning under Donald Trump.
What is the big beautiful.
Bill if not super costly to this country. So this idea that like Doge, was going to come in and cut billions and billions of dollars of government spending to get us set right, Well, that didn't happen. And then we were going to pass a budget it was going to be far more fiscally responsible than anything Joe Biden never did. Well, that didn't happen. So now we have huge debt and deficit and we're potentially putting ourselves in a position we're servicing that debt is only going to
get more expensive. No bueno. Across the board, we.
Touched on Lisa Cook for a minute and how she might be the way that Trump world could try to fire J Powell.
J Powell, but I want.
You to just she's pushing back. This will go to litigation. What's your sort of vibe on this, Listen, none of us know any.
Of the details yet of what Lisa Cook may or may not have done. Right, they're saying that she committed mortgage broad and saying that she had more than one property that she said was her primary right.
There are members of Trump world who have also, there are.
But we shouldn't. There's a caveat there because Pro Pabloca just reported last night that there's three members of the Trump administration who did the same thing. It's not the same thing in their case because just think about this for a moment. It's tricky. If you are, let's say, a new cabinet member, you might actually have a primary home in DC because that's where you're working, and in your home district because that's where you're from. So it
is somewhat complicated. So these three examples that Republica has given is different. It's complicated.
Now.
They claim that Ken Paxton, the Deputy Attorney General Attorney General Tax General sexes. They believe he did the same thing as Lisa Cook. If Lisa Cook even did it, we do run. But this again is about power and control. Donald Trump would like to remove Lisa Cook and put a friendly fed governor in there. And if j. Powell does not go through with firing her, then they will say we can fire J. Powell for cause for not doing his job. Where to me, this makes absolutely no sense.
Ja Powell is out of this job. Nine months from now, Donald Trump will be done with him. It will royal and rattle markets to do this. So what's the point. There isn't one. This is to me about control.
Staff Roul. Fun to have you on my podcast.
Goodbye friend, Thank bye Sison.
Dan Weiner serves as director of the Brennan Center's Election and Government program.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Dan, thanks so much for having me.
There's so much apping in Congress, but I want you to talk to us about this idea that is a passion project of mine.
So there is a ton going on in Congress. You're right, but there is this sort of growing and actually, genuinely I think bipartisan momentum to restrict members of Congress from trading stocks. I want to pause for one second.
And interrupt you as I will, in a very annoying way. It is so shocking that in a moment, which is probably if we do end up having history, which we may not, who knows, but like is one of the moments in my lifetime that the American government has been corrupt in a way that is flagrant and terrifying and yet continue.
Well, here's the thing. Is that fascinating backdrop. It's a fascinating backdrop. And what I think we have to understand here is that not everything comes down. I'm going to say it to Donald Trump, right, it's a tendency that we all have to be like Trump Trump Trump. And it's true. A lot of the most flagrant corruption we can talk about that if you want, is coming from the executive branch. There is also this little body called Congress.
You may have heard of them. They're not always doing much, but more often or often they are supposed to be the first branch of government.
Right.
They're the people the founders thought would be running the show. Most of the time. They have their own corruption issues. And one of the things we've seen actually is that if Congress is going to be that first branch of government, is actually going to be the body that also polices the other branches. It's got to get its own house in order. And the issue that you know is on the table today, right is stock trading, which, on the one hand, is kind of not the that's front and
center in everyone's mind, but it's outrageous, right, outrageous. They have access to non public information all the time. They are supposedly, you know, running our economy, but they also trade stocks. Many many members trade stocks. There's a lot going on there, and we can talk about it, including the fact, frankly they're not paid enough. So there's actually a dimension of this that I'm sort of sympathetic to them.
But if you want the American people to have trust in their government, you need to start with some basic idea of public services, of public's trust, and stock trading kind of flies in the face of that.
I would also add that you don't get to Donald Trump without many steps along the way that weaken your resolve against corruption.
So true, Look, we have a situation where Donald Trump's predecessor, it is not at the same scale, also tolerated some pretty outrageous behavior on the part of his own kid, right, and particularly actually what we was vice president, So you do have this process.
Where influence trading.
Influence trading, you had the Clinton years, I hate to say it right where there was some So there's a process by which.
I'm going to just interrupt you from yet again, I really believe that there is a straight line from There was a moment after Nixon where it looked like we were writing the ship and then go on.
Well, this is maybe a boring way to put it, by I'm gonna try. So. One of the things is interesting, So we had this moment after Nixon where we passed all these rules. This is why if you're a federal employee, your friend can't take you out for a cup of coffee. It drives everyone nuts. But one of the things that we kind of missed then is that actually at the very top, it's all still sort of an honor system. And that's from a combination of a lot of gaps
in the rules. But then also we like don't enforce the rules for people at the very top. So it's actually kind of crazy that for decades the people at the very top kind of just pretended that there were all these rules. Jimmy Carter his peanut farm, Ronald Reagan like asked DOJ for permission to keep getting his pension from California. But sooner or later, human nature maybe being what it is, that was going to start to break down. Donald Trump was not the only president to have had scandals,
but he was something of a catalyst for this. Really in his first term kept all his businesses. But now we're seeing this massive escalation with the crypto businesses, the luxury jet from Qatar, all of that. But yeah, I mean, we don't really have rules for folks at the very top. We just have tradition, and that's a problem, right.
So influence trading. I think the sort of genesis of this is a donor sleeps in the Lincoln bedroom. Well, why are we not using the White House to do? You know what I mean? Like, I feel like it's a slippery slope that gets you to owning crypto companies obviously not on the same order of scale. And we are, I think in a real crisis moment for American democrats and also just for corruption with large in the government.
So I want you to talk about this stop trading a little more, and that I want you to talk about sort of what this looks like and how you would do this.
Yeah, it's a great question. There are a lot of proposals that have been put out, There are a lot of folks working on it. I would say that the biggest thing is that you have to actually restrict the ability of seeing members of Congress to trade securities. Right now, what we have is this kind of they're supposed to disclose it, but they do happily later sometimes yeah, thirty days later, and if they don't, they get a two hundred dollars penalty, which you know, I know that's a
very serious consequence. So it's really a two piece. You have to have a meaningful restriction and then it has to be enforced, and there have to be penalties, and there has to be someone who's going to enforce it.
It reminds me of the Congressional Ethics Committee. Will you talk to us about that particularly?
Little Well, so there's both the House and Senate have ethics committee, and then the House has a sort of a body especially I think it's called the Office of Congressional Conduct Now it used to be the Office of Congressional Ethics.
You know, it's supposed to conduct investigations. It can't actually force people to cooperate it with it. Really, it also doesn't even really exist in any permanent way. It's just a little body that's created by the rules of the House. Means it can be abolished at any time, and it's sort of a DC ritual that they flirt with just getting rid of it at the beginning of every Congress,
and then they don't. Senate doesn't even have that. So there's very very weak enforcement of the rules that do exist.
And isn't it true one of the committees had never found anyone to be there's some like incredibly disturbing fact about these committees.
It is incredibly rare that they do anything to people. It is not a real body that people are scared of, is the sense that everyone has gotten. And then actually earlier there were there were sometimes allegations that also would just sort of politicized investigations of relatively trivial things. So the long history here of not being very effectual.
So sort of like a McCarthy kind of thing.
But not scary that way. So you know, like, yeah, but similar idea, you need real robust, even handed enforcement. That's actually a theme. You know, it's a lawyer theme, but it's it's this idea that the rules on the on paper just paper unless you have someone who's going to make them real. And of course right now we're thinking a lot about also that it can't just be the McCarthy, you know, approach of attacking one side and
being weaponized. So it's it's it's that there's a it's a complicated sort of calculus.
So there clearly is it's like one of the very few things pulls it like eighty percent. So on the left and the right, people don't want their government making money off of them, except if their last name is Trump. So what would that look like? And what are the bills? How would you pass it?
Yeah, I mean there are actually a number of proposals out there. There was just a bipartisan bill introduced this week. There have been others as well. I think they all kind of have a couple different elements. They all have some sort of fairly strict prohibition. So it's either they're banned from trading stocks while they're in office, and sometimes
even banned from holding stocks. Sometimes it says we use what's called a blind trust, which is that you can have someone else trade stocks for you, provided you don't know what they're trading, right, and it's in a satting account. So they all have this. And then the second component is they all have some sort of penalty, right, and it usually is a stiffer penalty than two hundred bucks per violation. It might be that you have to you know, discord is the legal term the asset plus ten percent,
so you have a penalty. And that is the other really critical component. And then some proposals also beef up the Office of Congressional Conduct right so that it can actually issue subpoenas, it can actually act as an enforcer. And there are different combinations there, but this is the gist of all of these things is to get at that and to have a real enforceable constraint on members.
How would this pass? Wasn't there a cutout in the BBB for this? And then Donald Trump didn't want it? And then it got Yeah, so talk us through that, because.
That was that is the great question. Because you look at yourself, You're like, it's got eighty percent approval rating, You've got all these Democrats and Republicans who say they want to do it, and then it hasn't gotten done. Here's the reality, right, is that I think and this is true for anti corruption rules generally. Is there is a dearth of political will sometimes because even the people know this stuff is popular, they don't like it. Actually.
So what I actually think needs to happen, right is there needs to be kind of overwhelming pressure. This is just that you have to save them from themselves to some extent, and that is going to I mean, that's really something on both sides of the aisle. Right. The Democrats have this huge challenge now, which is that they know that corruption is a weakness. And the Brennan Center's non partisan, but this I'm speaking just from the outside. They know Donald Trump is very weak. People don't like
the corruption, but the catches. People don't really trust the Democrats, and in fact, their corruption ratings are as bad as his or worse in some polls. So they both sides need to figure out how to actually get the public to trust them beyond their core partisans. And the way I think that this happens partly, it could be the Democrats could be Republicans could be a bipartisan coalition.
R is anti corruption legislation.
And people realize they can't keep talking about this stuff and not doing anything. They actually have to act and that at a certain point the pressure becomes overwhelming. But you know, the Democrats, there was a story in the Post the Democrats are going to make this a big theme of their midterm campaign. But there is a kind of where's the beef moment? You actually have to be ready to do these things.
Then, yeah, in the BBB they almost did pass it. It was just the Trump wanted to cut out. And then also they decided they just didn't need to write. I mean like they were just like, if we're just going to do unpopular legislation, why should we stop making money?
Right? I mean, and different people could debate whether they really were almost going to do it, whether this was a bit of a bit of a show. There are certainly people in the Republican Caucus in the House and the Senator who really want to do it, but there's also some pretty open, transparent opposition. I think it was one senator I might have been Rick Scott who said, well, I like making money and so beautiful, and you probably have people in the Democratics I'd sayd that too, right,
more quietly, more quietly. So this is it's a real challenge not just with this but frankly with all sort of anti corruption legislation.
One of the things that I would love you to talk about for a minute is when we talk about anti coruption and legislation, is that there were a number of things that did not pass last Congress because of Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin, two people who have gone on to do what exactly.
You know, I haven't kept up with their careers as much as I should.
Okay, well, it's okay, I have. So she's working on AI, she's working on mushrooms, she is, he is, you know, gone back to I Just my point here is that they both sort of their lobby adjacent or maybe lobbyists, and they were the reason that ROE is not codified, that voting rights is not modified, that any number of things. I wonder if you could talk about anti lobbying, anti corruption and that kind of thing.
Yeah, I mean, look, what I would say about both of them is that people who wanted to preserve the way Washington was doing things. And I'm not going to get into why their careers and their lives speak for themselves, but it was a real problem. It also, I think, and you know, I'm a huge believer in voting rights, but and in the Brennan Center is where I work.
But I think that critical anti corruption piece, for very understandable reasons, got a little lost actually in the political debate, so there was a sense of which a little bit was left on the table. Anti corruption is very popular
in West Virginia, and Cinemon Mansion were differently situated. I mean, Mansion was representing one of the most republican states in the country, but that is actually very popular in West Virginia, and the debate, while it was incredibly important for us to be talking about voting rights, there is a sense of which that anti corruption piece got lost a little bit, and that made it easier, frankly, for the whole effort to be just painted as something that was not going
to be of interest to Red state voters. I don't agree with that. I think the voting rights is important for everyone, but I think they were supposed to be combined, and I think, you know, one of the lessons, you really got to keep both of them in focus, because anti corruption has tremendous appeal across the country.
Right exactly exactly when you think about sort of putting these anti corruption legislation in place. Do you think democrats should run? Like, what is your vision of this? Democrats run on it? Or sort of what does it look like?
It is such a great question. I think anyone who wants to actually get beyond this sort of toxic fifty percent plus one dude or one person needs to Yes, run on those issues, but then actually make a commitment to doing them and then do it like. Actually, I think the most dangerous time in some ways isn't why you're running. It's oh, you won power, you promise to do this stuff. Are you going to do it? And I think for the thing that I worry the most about, So yes, I think it is a very very very
potent political message. But I think it can also be one that is not without risk, because you really are creating an expectation you'll do something. If you don't, the public is going to remember. I look at the system as a whole, and I look at how are we going to actually put our democracy on some sort of stable footing. I know that sounds crazy right now. No people getting elected and then not doing the thing they promised to do on this is what actually keeps me up at night.
No, for sure, and I also think that there's such hostility towards the federal government for any number of reasons. It's like, you don't get to the kind of stuff that's in Project twenty twenty five without a lot of anger.
At the federal government.
So true, you know, as we're watching them, you know, huge swaths of the federal government have been fired.
I wonder if you.
Could talk about you know, a lot of those protections are not there anymore, A lot of those people are not you know, there are certain parts of.
The government that are gone.
Now.
Yeah. Part of the problem again is that these things are all a mix of rules and written down laws, but then traditions and you just don't do certain things. Big theme is we have given the president's enormous amounts of power, and now he's being embedded by a Supreme Court that has an agenda to have a sort of monarchical president. I don't look into their souls. I don't know why this is important to them, but it is a long term ideological project of the US Supreme Court.
The only way and it is a huge challenge. But and here's where I really think is the hitch. We got to make it so that people actually believe government is a good thing. And you know, part of what drives people like me to distraction about Doge is it's not like there couldn't be a review of the federal government in an effort to make it work better. But
you got to start from like government is important. So I think that the way to do this right for anyone is you've got to come to the people, acknowledging legitimate cynicism, and then have a plan to make it better. And this gets us back to stock trading. The reason you start there is because you acknowledge that this isn't just about your enemy, this is about you too, and you know, figuratively, and that's how they've got to do it, which is actually why I think the stock trading piece
is a good place to start. Yeah, thank you, Dan, thank you for having me. This was so much fun.
A moment.
Jesse Cannon, so Molly, wait for it. There's more election fuckery down in Texas. The Republican Party of Texas is suing the state saying open primaries violate its free speech. Texas logic is what I heard it called.
All I can say is that they will cook up any reason to not do those things that's good for democracy.
Well, I think this is even more that they are trying to get more radical candidates and what they don't want is Democrats and independence voting in the Republican primary because they want the more fervent, fever swamp people voting more.
Yeah, open primaries mean that you have more normal candidates, just like rank choice voting in primaries is also good. But you know, the Republican Party is kind of nutty, and they use Texas as a place to do that nuttiness.
It really is the lab for really really bad policy.
Everything bad comes through Texas. That's it for.
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