Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines and we have such a great show for you today. Legendary campaign manager Stewart Stevens stops by to talk about how Trump gas lights us into thinking his policies are popular. Then we'll talk to Massachusetts Governor Mora Healley on the real life implications of Trump's careless cuts to the government but.
Versus the news SAMII, the woke Supreme Court. You know a lot of people have wondered if they would stand up. Apparently they don't stand up when they want when people want to put poop in our water, but they do deny the Trump administration's request to cancel two billion in foreign eight.
You're still in the poop water. I see.
I am.
Got you very upset. So look, this is the only thing we have standing between us and autocracy, and this is Amy Cony Barrett. The good news is that one of Trump's three justices is not a total lackey. The bad news is she is very ideologically religious. So this is do what you will. Thomas Alito will rubber stamp anything that Donald Trump comes up with Gorsic unless it has to do with Native Americans, and Brett Cavanaugh are
basically carbon copies of their older buddies. Amy is actually smart and Roberts has already you know, this is just his ill gotten legacy. So look, here's the story. Can Trump as president cancel legislation passed by Congress? The answer is constitutionally no, but Donald Trump doesn't care. Right, So Elon Mush is doing all of these things. It's an illegal right. Courts have said it's illegal, but now the
Supreme Court is saying it's illegal. So we have this foreign I think that it will now the Supreme Court has said that they have to continue to release it. We'll see what happens. Because JD has already mused about ignoring the courts again, one step closer to the constitutional crisis. All of us see ourselves walking into fun times.
So Maria, as we know, one of the worst witnesses against mister Trump, and he hates what people are witness against him. Well is mister Trump himself, because he always says things that are used to gets to a quarter of law, like what you.
Missed a g.
Carroll for an ex wife of his, and so many other occurrences where do you see it here, Doge.
Which you'll remember they had said in court that Elon was not the head of well during this state of the Union, though it's not called the state of a Union, the joint addressed to Congress, Donald Trump said, and you'll be shocked to hear this, I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, Doge. Perhaps you've heard of it, perhaps, which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the
gallery tonight. So there we go. They were saying that it wasn't headed by Elon Musk, but now Trump has said it is headed by Elon Musk, and this means that it is, and that means that he is in charge. And so now a lawyer is submitting new evidence in this case against DOGE using Trump's own words, which is, of course, one of Trump's biggest problems is when he testifies against himself.
It's not the first time, that's for sure as well. Though one of those things, you know, he loves his beautiful vets. Yet the Trump administration plans to cut eighty thousand employees from veteran affairs, according to Eternal Memo.
You know, here's the thing about all of this, and here's The thing about Trump and veterans. Thirty percent of the federal government is veterans, So if you love vets, you should probably keep them in the federal government. Whole idea, and I think this is like the net net of Trump's address to Congress is that he has a lot of catchphrases He's going to make government more efficient. But a lot of these catchphrases actually mean things that I
don't think he nor his voters have thought through. He's going to make government more efficient by firing eighty thousand veterans, right. He's going to make things cheaper by putting in tariffs, which will make things more expensive. These ideas are nonsensical and they do not lead to the objective. I don't understand his voters still seem pretty delighted with him. When
you think about last night's speech. There was a ton of like baiting liberals, saying liberals are bad, ton of elevating these very sad stories, but not a lot of like how else solve your problems? Right? Like if you were to say the man had a mandate for anything, it was to make prices lower, what did he spend almost no time talking about making prices lower even like you think about the boy that they had, this DJ who had cancer. So DJ had childhood cancer caused by chemicals?
Right?
They think it was caused by an exposure to chemicals. This Trump administration is gutting the EPA right so that more chemicals can be dumped, so that more children can inhale chemicals. And what else have they done? They've froze NIH funds And do you know where NIH funds go? Childhood cancer? So if you're going to elevate DJ, right, then why would you then elevate him and then muse about how terrible childhood cancer is all the while cutting
funding for childhood cancer? And ultimately that is sort of a really good example of what is happening this admin musing about problems while enacting policy that will in fact make the problems worse.
It's the Republican way in my opinion.
Anyway, speaking of the Republican way, the town halls have gotten very scary for these triggered snowflakes since people are not happy with the Republican congressmen who are attending them, and RCC sent out a memo saying no more town halls and governor walls who is just a guest on our YouTube channel has a very good solution.
Yes, Governor Walls, your a friend of mine. Go to our YouTube is very very good with the best.
We have some great stuff coming up this week. I might have great.
Stuff on the YouTube. Go to YouTube Molly John Fast Fast Politics. So this is actually really smart and this is what when we talk about flooding the zone with facts, this is what we're talking about. Tim Walls offers to meet with voters whose GOP reps refuse to hold town halls. Canceling town halls to avoid voter backlashes the thing you do right before you lose the majority, said one Democratic strategy. Let's not be over confident your team. But Dems are
actually and is right. But this is a really good point. Flood the zone with facts. Flood the zone with facts. The only way to counter flooding the zone with the bs is flooding the zone with facts. And doing this when it comes to these town halls is really good.
Like Democrats can be where Republicans won't be, and that's the only way they're going to get their message though, because remember the problem is not what the democratic messages, or maybe it is, but Really, the problem is that Democrats message is not getting through because what is getting through is the lies and obfuscation from the Republican side. Stuart Stevens is a legendary campaign manager and the author of the Conspiracy to End America Five Ways My old
Party is driving our democracy to autocracy. Welcome back to fast politics. Stuart Stevens, right, smally anything going on? No, nothing. There was so many times during the day I'm like, how the fuck do we have vacuate?
Oh yeah, I think we had with Trump a collapse of a center right party in America. So you don't have a center right party in America. They're saying the country is at least half center right. Yeah, I think completely upsets the balance. I think Trump's election has been greatly misunderstood.
Yeah, oh good, I would like to understand.
An election day, the COUMBA president had a forty percent approval rating. In modern politics, no one has ever gotten over two points higher. Incombent party's never gotten more than two points higher than approval rating. The right track was twenty seven percent. No incombent party's ever won with it below forty five. It was a perfect environdent for a challenger, and we know from polls six cent we know anything from polls that another challenger Nikki Haley or lean young
Kin would have done better than Trump. Trump won was usually as a challenger. That's not to be confused with an embrace of trump Ism. And you know, I mean, I think this is how people end up worst of being volcanos. There's the draft of volcano Belch as it ranged, and the next thing you know, you're throwing virgins into the volcano gud. The two are not related. And I think that they knew that Project twenty twenty five was poisoned from their polling, and now that people were having
a drink, it hadn't gotten less toxic. What I find just the most remarkable here is how this party that I was drawn to with Ronald Reagan standing in front of the Berlin Wall. Here on this wall, I'm scorte. The Republican Party is now on the other side of the wall. It is the we should get out of
NATO and help rebuild a Warshawa party. And I just don't think anything like this is that I'm or whatever's ever happened in a democracy that the beating heart of the Republican Party was anti Soviet Union, anti communism, staring in Russia, and now it's the beating heart of Putinism and pro Russia.
Wow.
Yeah, Yeah, it's funny because it's like I think about the bottle, right, and I think about Alis Slackin. So there is a school of thought which I don't not subscribe to it, but I think it's an oversimplification. It's hard to parse. Right. The biggest problem was, I think, was Joe Biden's complete inability to communicate social media. Mainstream media could not And you know, is that because he's the world's oldest person or is that because he was
never a good communicator? Who cares? But that was like the fundamental original sin of how we got where we got in twenty twenty four. But there's a school of thought which thought Harris would be able to connect with the normal, sane Republicans. Right, those are gone. They are Democrats now, right, because the people Trump got to turn out, right, I mean, I just want to revisit, like sort of how to go forward from here? Trump got low propensity voters,
he basically told I mean. The great example is the story in the Washington Post last week the woman who voted for him because she thought he would make IVF free. That's like a great example, right, he said lots of different things to lots of different people, promised the world and now they can't get it, which actually happened in Trump one point zero, but because we are the United States of Amnesia, no one remembered. Meanwhile, Harris was like, I can't give you this. I can't do that. That's
not how any of this works. Which American voters they don't like that. So here's the question. Democrats decided, we'll embrace Liz Cheneyism. We'll get the sane ones. There are no sane ones. So where do Democrats go from here? Should they be just lying about stuff? Because it worked really well for Trump and the rest of the party seems to be spinning around the drain that way? Where do you go when things have devolved this much?
So let's step back. Republican is celebrating because they only lost to eighty six percent of Black voters. Right, they're celebrating because they only lost sixty three percent of Asian Americans, celebrating because they only lost fifty four percent of Hispanics. Usually in politics, we consider losing bad. So the only group with winning are not on college educated white which is the fastest declining group in America two thousand and worked on a boost campaign. You know, we look at polls.
It was about sixty percent of the electorate. Now it's thirty eight. It'll be less. So when we finish, I think that there is a lot of confusion. I mean, Trump never won working class voters. You weren't white working class voters. He never won low propensity voters. You weren't white lower propensity voters. And going back to sixteen, I always thought that the voters that he would gain at the lower propensity because of the Muslim stuff, because of
Mexico is a bunch of vrapist stuff. All of that that you gained, you would lose in college educated voters, which was happening right up until the Coomi letter. I think it's very instructive in this election to look at say, Virginia, New Jersey, does it I think very legitimate controls in this election. No one was really a campaigning in Virginia or New Jersey. There was no campaign, So where was
that trumpet a lot better? And I think that we tend to look at Trump and come to the conclusion that all everything we know about politics is wrong, which to I think is proven to be true. But again, a country that seventy five percent of the people think we're going on the wrong track seventy three percent, that is not a party to embrace a vice president. And look,
I think causalities are the hardest thing in politics. But probably in years to come, no one is going to look at this and say, you know, this whole thing of having incombent president resigned in July and going with the vice president, we should keep doing that.
No, no, right, And historically that's never worked, you know, like remember the last time that happened where the Democrat resigned and the vice president took over, and it was a fucking disaster too, And it was even there was more time and it was still a disaster. So I think for sure that's absolutely true. I also just wonder, I mean, and then the thing that I feel like we really don't talk about, which we should is this post COVID brain fog, which America really got affected by.
But here's my question. So Tuesday, Trump gave a speech and his approval rating was the highest it's ever been for him, which is still low for normal presidents, but high for him. And then right before he went on it sort of ticked down. So now it is again sort of more disapproved than approved, where it's we're in
that wrong direction. He's finally almost back to normal. And you know, it took the Ukraine stuff and the tear off stuff and the crashing the Dow stuff to get us here we are six weeks in.
Yeah.
You know what's really interesting about this is only two presidencies have had a lower favorability for the president one hundred days after his first hundred days versus election day, which makes sense, like I didn't vote for the guy, but I'm going to give him a chance. So at this point Biden had almost fifty percent favorables, Obama had sixty five percent favorables. Even Bush had like I think fifty seven percent favorable with Bush two in two thousand
and four. The only two presidency whether this doesn't have was Trump on two pousand and seventeen and Trump today, which I think is actually kind of profound because he's shedding voters. The hardest thing for people in life probably to admit is why I made a mistake, particularly this close to when you made the mistake. You have people who voted for Trump who now are not for Trump, and it usually goes the other way because people like
to say that they voted for someone who won. So usually in polling you ask after an election, did you vote for somebody? The person who won is going to do better in that poll than they actually get an election day. That kind of human I want admit I voted for a loser. I think that's a really profound trend. None of this gets away from the fact that the Democratic Party has two problems. It doesn't have a message and it doesn't have a messenger. But I think both
of those are pretty easily fixable. There's a lot of talent in the party is needed somebody to emerge. We didn't have a process of a primary and which other people could be both. I mean, thinking about it, in two thousand and four, jar and Kerry lost to President cyber Barack Obama won it with the speech, and we didn't have a similar sort of process here. We're a very personality driven country. I mean, there's reason People magazine
has more subscribers than Foreign Affairs. And what's really necessarious for a new group of Democrats emerges the face of the party, which I don't know who picks flocking, But that's not a bad start. I'll take the CIA over against the Russian age.
But do you think that slocking sort of CIA you mention Republican presidents. Do you think that's the play? Like, do you wonder if there really is sort of like if it's better to try and go for the Democratic base. Like, for example, there's this theory of the case that the original sin was rejecting burning that had the party said, you know, this is what a lot of the voters seem to want, and even though it makes the donors nervous, let's just try it out because this is what they want, right,
Like it's such a stark contrast to Trump. Right, this is what the base wants. We don't want it, but it's the base ergo, we're fucked. But Bernie, they were like, shut it down, this is not for us. Makes everyone nervous. No one wants to have free dental care. Right, So do you think the original sin here, and this is a real question and not a set of fake question, is that reject of the populist movement in the party for a Hillary Clinton sort of more manufactured populism that
people didn't really want like and again this sucks for me. Right, they weren't feminists. It turns out they were just populous. Bernie had a groundswell of people who decided he was their guy. Hillary was I'm with her, you're with her. You know. It was a little bit different.
Yeah, Look, there are a lot of different ways than women tolection. I mean, if nothing else, you look at the way Trump ran and one is very different than the way we as Republicans had won before. We would take reasonable big state governors and run them and they would be able to get you know, Bush in two thousand four is able to get a majority. So trum comes along. He's the exact applicant table to the majority. So I think it's very difficult to say if this had happened,
it would have been a disaster. We don't know the quality of the candidate. Once you received a nomination, I think you become a different candidate. So what would Burnie have been like after different candidate? You know? I mean I first saw Bernie when I was at Middlebury and I was riding my bike down Church Street in Burlington. Are scholaris limitic out there the only about rint control who's running from mayor, and I was Bernie when he won by eight votes. He won't eight votes. So I've
always found in a fascinating character. I think in the long term, though, if you asked me where to put money, I'll put money on the slockin. I think that it is more the fact that she has I think a higher ceiling, the ability to appeal to more people that message fuck and Shapiro. I think that is sort of an old fashioned way to win elections.
Here's this seventy percent in the middle, that is what you're saying.
Well, I don't even know what the middle is anymore. You know, Bernie Standers is to the right of the Republican Party on Russia, right. You know, he was honeymoon in Russia, but he didn't like stay there, right, So I don't know what to do with these numbers. We're the pro tariff party, so the Conservatives and economic theory now or the Democrats, they were like what the fuck. I do think that the Democratic Party has an underappreciation for cultural wars, which is why as a Republican we
want a lot of races. We had no business winning, and the fact that the Harris Caanby never responded to this transgender ad. This is a curious fact that we don't talk about it. I know Trump never ran a positive ad.
Right, It's so much about responding to everything, communicating as much as possible, and not necessarily what you say. Like one the worries I have when it comes to the leadership in the House is that there's still an obsession with getting the message right. And I don't think that fucking matters. Like I think if we can learn anything from Trump, it's that it's just getting the message out and get the message out in a way that you
didn't have to ten years ago. Like you can't just do five interviews, you have to do fifty or one hundred or five hundred.
Yep.
The road to hell is paved with focus groups in politics, because there's this belief that somehow you can get, as Roger ray Hills used to say, he get thirty amateurs in a room that you're professionals what to do. It's based upon this sort of political alchemist theory, if you just worked this enough out of this you can get some sort of golden message. And there is no golden message. I think ninety percent of message is belief in that message,
which is why there is Bernie is so good. Bernie does believe this shit he believed forty years ago, I believe it today. He is a genuine guy. And I think that that passion people read through. And I mean Trump is a passionate hater, not an act. I think the JD Vance it's all kind of more of an act because I think he's such a sort.
Of I mean, I don't know what is going on there, but like the fact that he has sort of lucked his way into this insane situation. It does seem like few people are less charming and charismatic than that man.
He's a Chauncey Gardner of current politics.
Unbelievable. What do you think would happen if he became president?
I think he would be president and he would run for re election and he would lose the primary.
Yeah, that's what I think too, because for.
Him to be president when Trump had somehow been exited from a scene.
He doesn't have any of the magic.
Yeah, he doesn't. You would be able to get what you get with Trump with someone else who is sort of not crazy. And when dance is on the ballot. He had four in two thousand, few votes than the Republican governor of Ohio. That's really weird. I mean, he's
four hundred thousand people voted. Just think about it. I mean, that's a really long line you line up for in a thousand people, and they all they would both that they voted for the Republican governor, but not discouch an events that doesn't appen very are And I think the
Advance is just a mess. I mean, he's a guy that kind of reinvents himself, but he is the ultimate gi candidate because he used to sort of somewhat faux Appalachian hillbilly background to get a d al and then he becomes you know, goes to Peter Thiel, hangs out, he's a globalist. It's just he's a very quixotic, strange, weirdly formed candidate. Erson he goes and gives the speech in Germany to a party that if his own children were brought to a rally, they would probably be booed
or attacked at that party. That's weird. There are moments in politics. You see this a lot in presidential campaigns where the only thing you can do is just show up and win, like you know, you've lost their primary should have won, and you can't talk your way out of it and explain why you did. You just have to say, Okay, what's next, Like you know, Belichick played in the next play. And I think that's where where Democrats are now. I think though, that the fundamentals are
in their favor. The economy is getting worse. If you look at Putin's favorability, it is not very high, not being driven hired, and a Putin versus Zelensky popularity cond just slency's going to win going away. The greatest thanger, though, I think, is the damage that they can do in the interim, and it's just incredibly troubling, and also the Republican Party.
Stuart Stevens, thank you, Thank you.
Mark.
Will you please come back?
I absolutely love to more.
Healy is the governor of Massachusetts.
Welcome, Governor, welcome, good to be with you.
I listened to that interview you did for the Daily. I thought there was a lot of barrier Republican framan about some of what she was talking about with the Attorney's General. So I am hoping you could first start by talking about you were an age you now are the governor. This has been the root in which Democrats have protected their constituents against this wild federal overreach. So talk to me about why that isn't a partisan issue.
The job of attorney general is to really represent the people of your state. And when I was attorney general in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump did a number of things that hurt a lot of people in states across this country, taking away healthcare for example, or attempting to in a denying coverage for any number of things, taking away federal funding for programs. I mean, we went to court and ultimately we suit him well over one hundred times his administration.
We won eighty five percent of those cases, which shows you just how wrong he was and how often he was actually violating the law that the courts actually vindicated the AGS and said yep, you're right, and we won the vast majority of those cases. And those are cases that needed to be brought because laws were being violated.
Here we are now in twenty twenty five Trump two, and you see democratic ags doing the same thing, protecting their residents, protecting their economies, protecting their states from federal overreach in some instances, and from violation of the law by the Trump administration. And so I think it's not a surprise to me that you see them meeting with success. They are meeting with success, and they're going to continue to need to do that. And you know, it really
should not be a partisan thing. I think in this country, the idea of the constitution is that we're a nation of laws. The judiciary enforces those laws, the legislative brands makes those laws, and the executive is supposed to execute on those laws. And when that's not happening, the recourse is the courts.
Yeah, there has been I think a ground swell of anger among constituents. It has felt a lot of the time like leadership Democratic leadership. Republican leadership is totally in the tank for Trump. They've given up all their article too whatever, they're just in it. But it has felt to a lot of us the Democratic leadership has been slow to fight back. That has not been my take on you, And I'm hoping you could explain to us a little bit about your thinking and how you got here.
Well, you know, Mollie, it's I have a responsibility to my state. I said from the outset. I will work with the Trump administration. I will work with any administration when it is consistent with the law and it helps the people of my state, so I said a few weeks ago the inauguration. I also said I'd be the first to stand up if a president or federal administration does something that hurts my state. You know, in terms of where we are, I think the first week it
was maybe about seeing exactly what he would do. I mean, so much was laid out in twenty twenty five, but you know, people were sort of gauging whether this was just going to be a show for a week or
ten days or two weeks. What I have seen, though, with each passing week, and which is why I have been speaking up, is he is doing things that are totally inconsistent with a true America First agenda, Totally inconsistent with an American independence when it comes to energy agenda, Totally inconsistent with what I thought was his winning campaign promise, which he was going to lower cost because every day he is doing something to raise costs on goods for
people in our state. And so you know, I tried to focus as a leader in Massachusetts on how am I delivering for people. It's why my first two years, I've worked to get the largest housing bill pass so we can build more housing and lower costs. It's why I cut taxes. I'm the first governor in twenty years in Massachusetts to cut taxes. It's why I've expanded child care, made community college costs free so more people can get
educated and ready for the workforce. And at the same time, the Trump administration is doing things that interfere with that progress.
And that hurt us.
And I continue to encourage leadership in Congress to speak up. Democratic leadership in Congress and democratic leadership in Congress. Frankly, everybody should be speaking up. I mean, I don't know about you, but if somebody comes from my power tries to usurp my power, I'd be pretty upset about that. Trump has completely usurped Congress's power. And the Republicans are fine, They're just like, okay, take it, they're giving it away.
But the Democrats got to stand strong on that. They've also got to talk to and tell the stories of what's happening to everyday Americans out there every day. They should be doing that.
Yeah, no, I don't understand why they're not doing daily press conferences. The way Cuomo did during the pandemic, just narrating what's happening, because if they don't, what we saw from the twenty twenty four cycle is Republicans certainly won't.
Yeah, I mean, I do see people like a Brian Shadza, Chris Murphy. There are people who've been speaking up. I also, Molly think it's important. I don't need press conferences necessarily on the Capitol steps. I don't personally think that's affected and alongside everyday americans in your district. In fact, let them tell the story of what it means to be the person who was responsible for inspecting our medicines or our milk or or farms, and what it means to
no longer have them in the job. Right, It's got to be more of that. And I just see everyday Americans speaking up, and I try to tell everybody when you see that, share their social media.
Yeah, I mean. One of the I think the great crimes of the Biden administration was that they did not do any interviews for the first two years, and then they were like, why can't we get any coverage? And it was like, meanwhile, Donald Trump, that White House is always a very leaky White House. The media has him in there all the time. It strikes me that already we're seeing a number of cases where the federal courts are coming in and saying this is illegal. Right, Like,
practically much of doge is. There's no part of the constitution where it's like, if the president has a really rich donor, he can bring him in to run stuff. So a lot of this is illegal. We haven't yet quite seen them ignore the courts, but they're certainly we've certainly seen jd. Vance muse about it. I heard Governor
Mills talk about this a little bit. But what do we do when because it feels like it's coming where Donald Trump says you can't have that FEMA money because I'm not happy with the whatever the way you rake your forests, or I mean, what happens when he plays chicken with money that you paid in.
We absolutely cannot accept that the whole system crumbles if he does not comply with the law. And people need to understand, Okay, yes, he's trying to weaponize federal funding and he's threatened to do that, and in that case, people need to be out expressing the outrage. Leaning on congressional Republicans to buck up and take their power back, because it may be somebody else's district impacted today, but it could be yours tomorrow and red state, blue state.
How many people are on medicaid in this country? How many people rely on food assistants or seniors relying on help paying heating bills, how many people are in vas These are not Republican Democrat issues. There are people in red states and blue states similarly situated who are going to be similarly devastated. Your comment earlier that we've had successful rulings to stop some of this bad stuff, illegal stuff from happening, is true. It's also true though, that
the administration is finding ways to slow things down. Okay, I still from my office. I'm calling on funds that should have been released that havn't come through. I'm calling on NIH funding. They haven't even convened the next panel to study to approve the next pipeline of NIH funding, and so that effectively shuts down research. So it's important to bring those cases and enforce the law. People also need to know there is real time heard happening. Look
at the Federal workers right, My dad was one. He was chief of water supply for EPA for many years. I got a guy out in Springfield, mass He runs the VA center out there. Four time deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, combat veteran fired. A third of federal workforce is fired. So even though you know rulings are out there saying they can't be fired and what they did was wrong, you still have had. What are we up to now, Seventy eighty thousand people leave the workforce a political career,
folks who we need. So people just need to be both educated about what's happening right now and then speaking up because I don't know, well, you know, plenty of people voted for Trump thinking that he was going to
ower their costs. I don't think they voted for him thinking that Elon Musk was going to be running around with a chainsaw and a bunch of nineteen twenty year old rose looking at all our data, taking all our bank account information, and figuring out a way that they could potentially manipulate that to their business advantage.
Nobody knows right, nobody knows what DOGE is doing right. It's a black box. There's no transparency. We saw a website. It had some stuff a lot of it wasn't accurate. Is there any way to stop dog because, like it does strike me as we're hurtling towards inadvertent privacy data disaster here totally.
As a former attorney general, we used to go after companies that engaged in the kind of wholesale data breach that the Trump administration has essentially allowed. Right, So it's kind of ironic. The lack of protections or security that are in place is really really disturbing. I think a couple things. One, yes, it's got to be gated. These people are unelected and they are doing things that they were not given authority by Congress to do. So it's got to be stopped in the courts. It's also got
to be stopped in the court of public opinion. So every day when they have to remove another item from the so called wall of receipts because it's bogus and made up, there's making up numbers of savings. That's got to be called out. Alongside that, the continued telling of the destruction. Look, I'm all for efficiency and government, you know, I'm all for In fact, I used to prosecute cases of fraud, waste and abuse. Okay, we all want more efficiency.
Taxpayers deserve to have their dollars, you know, maximized, right, But you don't destroy it. You don't just just just take a wrecking ball to it, which is what this really is. From planes falling out of the sky, to nobody being home for a little bit at the nuclear stockpile, to doctors being let go from VA hospitals, like this is bad. It does not make America stronger. It does
not make us more independent. And like I say, to go back to the medical research, which, by the way, the government after World War II decided they were going to invest in research and science and from that sprang forth all sorts of entrepreneurship, business, world saving cures and treatments.
Right.
They want to stop all of that, and they want to give it all away to China. Right now, who's recruiting to take all of that business back to China. It doesn't make any sense. I want America to remain the greatest superpower on Earth and the world depends on that. So I don't understand that Molly.
The NIH Fund, just because there was you know, Eline cooked up this idea that it was going to cut indirect funding to fifteen versent. It wasn't a brilliant I mean, this person has never had anyone around him who has ever told him the truth Like that was what was so clear to make. And you know, the indirect funding, the way it works is that some times it's as much as sixty five percent, but it goes to the institution. You have a lot of those said institutions in your state, Harvard, mit.
So first of all, it was the court put a pause on it said that they could go back, but the money has not gone back. Right, They're still himming in hawing with the grant money, right.
That's right, and they're not allowing new pots of money to be you know, discussed in studies and set up for a future pipeline. Here's why this is really important and what people have got to understand. We're talking about three and a half billion dollars for the state of Massasachusetts. It's going to our teaching hospitals, our research institutions, our universities to fund postdocs who right now are discovering the
cure for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for Parkinson's, for als. And what the Trump administration and what NIH has done is say we're cutting that off, and we're not giving you that funding. Now, let me tell you about end quote indirect costs. This is a to me nomenclature and semantics. At the end of the day, when you support indirect funds, you were supporting that. That's research. You can't do research without a lab. You can't run experiments in computing without electricity.
We're talking about eggs lately a lot. Right, If we want eggs in this country, do businesses just pay for the hen No, they pay for the feed and the lighting and the barn and whatever. Right, Like, you need to invest in the entirety of these things in order to be able to actually have something from that. And with NIH funding, so much has happened in science as a result. And here's the thing, Mollie, do you know
how many red so called red states. And I don't like the red state blue state naming, but Alabama, for example, NIH funds to the point where it is the largest employer in the state of Alabama. Texas has got really important research happening. This is a big deal. It's bad for all our states. It's bad for American competitiveness because again, I want America to be the place of invention. And where redesign and develop the cures and the treatments. And you know what kills me the most? And I don't
care Democrat, Republican who you are. You mean to say right now that it's a good thing that NIH and the Trump administration have cut funding and research off. They could cut research off for the cure that God forbid, your little kid gets cancer, right or your parent gets Alzheimer's. That makes no sense. I'm hoping that there can be
more alignment around that. I'm hoping that there can be a greater apprehension about how the system works, how important it has been, how much industry has sprung from it in innovation in this country, and what it has contributed to GDP And to say nothing of the lives saved and that is happening in all states with NIH funding.
No, it's just wild. I mean, it just is sort of mind blowing. And if you find that the federal government plays check in with money, I mean, what are you willing to sort of do to really fight back on a federal level when it comes to Trump world sort of terrorizing states that it feels mad at.
Of course I'll fight back. Of course I'll stand up I'll stand up for my state. I'll stand up for my residents. I'll stand up for our businesses. I'll stand up for our economy. I was trying to have this conversation with the Trump administration about wind for example. This is an administration that's been all about haven't we heard America energy independence? Well, it seems to me if that's really what you believe, then you shouldn't take solar off
the table. You can have oil and gas, But why are you taking solar off the table, which is deployed in the states around including many red states around the country. Why are you taking away that energy source? Why are you killing the wind industry which right now is powering homes off the coast of Massachusetts with its windmills, and
we've got others and deployment. By the way, talk about an economic impact in Massachusetts alone, Molly, We've got nineteen hundred contracts in forty one states related to the wind industry. These are jobs, labor jobs, construction jobs, all of which goes away if the Trump administration takes away the wind industry.
You know, they're making the steal for our stuff. In Kentucky, they're making the ships for our stuff in Louisiana, Texas, like it has such a big effect, and like I want lower costs, and one way to have lower energy cost is you're bringing more energy online. So why would you take away something that can be a huge value add to energy independence for this country. I'll fight back. I'm trying to explain impact and consequence and to encourage people to do that because Congress has got to act.
Congress has got to step up and act, and I don't think that they're going to do that unless they hear the pain and the plight of every day America and saying, hey, this isn't what I signed up for. It's hurting me.
Thank you, Governor. Good to be with you. No moment set Jesse CANNONBALLI junk fast.
I think one of the funny things a lot of people will always think about is like, will the corporations come to our defense? Will the people who are invested in our economy come to the people's defense?
And we're starting to see it.
I was shocked, as somebody who reads marketing emails and lets some of them get in my path, how many emails I got this week from big companies saying we're not raising our prices yet, but Target CEO Streams said you'll pay more because of Trump's tariffs within days.
So I want to point out here that the billionaire's elon Jeff Bezos, that crew was more than happy to kiss the rang because they thought it made good business sense. But now that these companies realize that this is going to be bad for business, they're becoming honest Again. Do I think that these people are doing this because they love us and want to see us healthy. No, they don't give a fuck about us. It is more that these corporations don't want to be blamed for downsides. They
want to protect their bottom line. They know, if you're the Target CEO, you want to make money for your shareholders. You know that making things more expensive for no reason is going to decrease value for your shareholders. You're going to make less money because things are going to be more expensive and people aren't going to spend as much. So they are trying to get Trump to change his mind. And now we're watching this parade of people trying to
get Trump to change his mind. The problem is Trump is not thoughtful or sensible. He doesn't respond. One of the things you saw with Biden administration, even if you don't like them, when people wanted them to do something, they could get them to do it. So a great example is like there was this bank that all the tech bros were invested in. It crashed. Everybody put pressure on them to save this bank. They save the bank. Do I think that they should have saved the bank?
I don't fucking know. But the point was that were very responsive to things. So if you said stuff to them, they sort of understood, here's Trump. This is a totally stupid idea. Everyone in the world thinks it's stupid. I'm not sure you could find five people who think tariffs are a good idea, but you can find one, and that one is called Donald Trump. Now everyone in the world is going to try to get him to change
his mind. You know, now already there are carveouts for car companies and they're going to be more carve outs. But you know, the markets are rallying back, so maybe they think that, you know, he delayed the car tariff. People are taking whatever little bits they're hoping Trump will change his mind. And you know, we heard Howard Lutnix say maybe he will, maybe he won't. I mean the instability is bad for the market and a whole, but
they're trying to be very optimistic. What I think is so incredibly annoying about this tariff stuff is that this market is desperate to give Donald Trump the benefit of the damn right, Like they really want him to be good for the market. Like if a Democrat did this kind of stuff, the market would just crater. But they just somehow like trickle down. These people so want trickle down economics to work.
I compared it the other night to rooting for your perpetual drunk driving Fred when he walks up to the bar that the bartender suddenly drops dead and they can't serve them.
Yeah, so that's where we are.
That's about the odds are of it going.
Well, Yeah, there we go. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.