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 Donald Trump bizarrely claimed that migrants have a phone app that connects them directly to Kamala Harris during a speech at Trump Tower on Thursday. I am without words. We have such a great show for you today the Bulwarks. Tim Miller stops by to talk
the state of the presidential race. First we'll talk to Carlisle Group co founder David Rubinstein about what he's seeing in the political landscape.
But first the news.
So, Mallie, I really feel like the Springfield, Ohio people have been through enough. It really if this news cycle could just go away, I'm sure everyone would be happier, But unfortunately politicians have the politics.
So what do you see? Hear?
Trump has said he will go to Springfield and the famous two weeks. That could be two weeks, that could be two years, that could be never, because weeks is an amount of time that can sometimes never happen in Donald Trump world.
It's the infrastructure week of this cycle, right.
But the Springfield mayor rejected a call with Jade Vance and said, in fact, the safety of our residence is a responsibility we should take seriously. It should not be politicized. Springfield's mayor wrote to Vance, you know, there's a school of thought that Harris should go and be there and talk about Trump's rhetoric towards Haitian immigrants and how Unamerican it is. I'm not sure that it is the best use of her pulpit, but maybe it is.
I don't know.
Obviously, Trump shouldn't go. Do you remember in twenty sixteen when Trump would go somewhere and then they'd have elevated kind of hate crimes in the area afterwards.
I do, I do. It's almost like his rhetoric emboldens people.
Yeah, so I hope that he doesn't go to Springfield. I hope that Harris does meet this head on. But it's, you know, a complete fiasco create by JD. Vance and based on almost just nothing.
And this mayor has been doing tons of press hits basically trying to calm this down and do the right thing. And he is a Republican mayor.
Right and also the governor of the state. Mike DeWine has also said that this is just super unhelpful.
Billy shifted gears. We talked about ethics and politics. This was a bad week for it being a good connotation of the two words together.
It was not a good week for ethics in the American political system. On the left, we had and I'm not even tre he's a Democrat, but we had our Mayor Eric adams Man who bought the cop robot. That guy, I think he got arranged today facing numerous.
Counts bribery, being non registered for it aged to doing business.
And getting a lot of a lot of free trips on Turkish air.
In fact, first stop is always it's Stumbo anyway.
So but that was not all when it came to Dicey ethics. But I do want to just mention the Democrat because we are nothing if not nonpartisan, and if Republicans ever got normal again, we might be nice to them. On Thursday, Representative Matt Gates, you'll remember him from being just a complete lunatic and also having had too much botox in his forehead so it made his.
Eyes were That's something I will never forget personally.
There's nothing wrong with botox, but you just have to be a little careful. You always know things are going great when you publicly deny you had sex with a woman under eighteen. Always Good made a vague comment about drug use and warned that he may not cooperate with a subpoena from the House Ethics Committee. Real talk, Jesse Cannon. The House Ethics Committee could not be more toothless discuss.
It is basically a ninety year old person with deadsures the way that it has teeth.
Yes, yeah, it has literally no teeth. They have like almost never found anyone. The House Ethics Committee is like when the library gives you a fine. Okay, it's like when you don't do your jury summons. But he's still worried and he still may not participate. Earlier in the week, The New York Times broke a story that freshman congressman this is one of these congressional seats that Biden won. It's Long Island Anthony d Esposito. You may remember him.
He employed both his mistress and his fiance's daughter on his congressional payroll.
Because why not.
I mean, you would think you might be slightly worried about them meeting each other.
But again, we still have Santos.
Pleading guilty to wire fraud and then on the Democratic side because the stupid and criminal is not a partisan activity. Bob Menendez with the gold bars, everybody knows that story. Henry Qular was indicted in May for money laundering conspiracy Briber because of course business interests in Mexico and auberation by Jean and then of course Hunter Biden and the FBI has seized Representative Andy Ogle's cell phone in August. Again, we don't know what the TLDR on that is, though
he has been accused of filing falls campaign reports. Scott Perry has his own legal fight with the Justice Department after his phone was seized in part of the January sixth committee. And so there you go. It just is an absolute congressional ethics shit show in Congress.
Turning to a place I really did not think we'd ever discussed, because I remember when we used to see Nebraska's one electoral vote in its second district, we'd always laugh and go, why the hell will they do that? That's become quite a political hubbed lately. Molly, what do you see there?
So Republicans are desperate?
I think actually the best explanation of it comes from Dave Weigel, friend of the Pod semaphore our political journalist. This guy goes everywhere, he said, and I think this is really the right take, making multiple loud plays for Omaha's electoral vote. You'll remember the Republicans wanted to switch it to a winner take all state, getting Representative Don Bacon on the record saying that he wanted to switch it to winner take all and that not doing it
is obviously the worst ending here for ours. And a new poll shows that Harris is up eleven in Nebraska's second district. You'll remember Biden won it by six or seven and twenty twenty. This is a really good example of people don't like it when you take away their stuff, and in this case it's the electoral vote. With Nebraska second, Harris would only need Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin to get to two seventy. Again, this is this whole. As you know,
we're thirty eight days till the election. We're just sort of cruising and hoping that, you know, she can win Pennsylvania, but this would make it so she wouldn't have to necessarily.
We'll see what happens. But it continues on Somali.
We've found out that Respucinar, as you like to call them resputant. The polling firm that always seems to put a Republican up very high compared to the rest might be doing some nefarious dealings. Would you see here?
So this is an incredible story file under stuff you suspected and thought was probably right. This is a polling company, and American muckrakers have discovered that they post these emails detailing how the conservative leaning pollsters have been sharing polls with Trump advisors and campaign officials. Basically, this is Pulse's propaganda. Right, Trump is doing better in these polls. It makes Trump feel better, it makes everyone feel better. It's like internal polling.
It has different uses, many of which are nefarious. I'm not so shocked to see it, because anyone who's been paying attention knows their numbers are way out of whack. But it's a good reminder that if you think something nefarious is happenings.
We have even more tour dates for you. Did you know the Lincoln Projects, Rick Willson, have Fast Politics, Mali jug Fast are heading out on tour to bring you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest. We'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be
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Tim Miller is a contributor to The Bulwark and host of the Bulwark Daily podcast. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Tim Miller.
I'm just so excited to be here. I'm trying to think, is it a non Bulwark edition? Have I ever been on any other show more? I don't know. I guess you and the podbros. Probably it's a competition. I think you might have them be.
I like you a lot, and I think that you're really smart and also hilarious.
Than can' I'm getting uncomfortable though.
That's good. You're terrible and you're easy to get, all right.
That's my wheelhouse. Yeah, let's ship talk me a little bit. That's that's why I like it.
But I do think you're doing a really good job to engaging with whatever is out there.
I feel like.
Every day in this endless election cycle, some days I'm like, this is going to be fine, American democracy is going to continue. Why are we all so upset? And some days I'm like, where am I going to move?
We should be upset. I'm riled myself up this morning. So you've picked a good time to ask me this. Oh good, And that is because this is a really cool election. Like I'd rather become mold than Trump. Sure, and if this was a situation where it's like, you know, my basketball team is like the Nuggets are playing against the Mavericks, and I'd rather be the Nuggets. Like that'd be great, I'd have I'd be confident, I'd be going into the game. I want to have a beer. I
want to watch it. But like the country is on the line, like I'd rather become mold than Trump slightly is like not good.
Enough for me.
It should be more, should be clearer. And I'm very frustrated that I feel like there's a lack of urgency not among the Harris campaign. I think they're doing a good job. I could see a little bit more from them, just as far as visibility, but like directionally they're doing a good job. But like the other people out there, why are Mark Cuban and Sarah Longwell and Mollie jong
Fast the only people that I see doing interviews. I do just feel like that this moment, when somebody is running, who has already attempted an insurrection, who already spurred a mob at the Capitol, calls for people to step up and speak out, and I think that there's a lot of people that are not stepping up and I think it's because there's maybe just a little bit of false confidence about Kamala. Confidence is good, but I don't like overconfidence.
I was texting with Mark.
I had always thought Mark was the best possible surrogate for Harris World, because Trump has this thing where he's like businessman, billionaire, alpha alpha, And what we talk about a lot, and I think this is largely true, is that Harris wins with women and she's lagging with this sort of alpha man man, masculine man, man rip your shirt off.
Crew, you know.
And so what I think is great about Mark is that he really makes the case that she's actually better on the economy, which we all well, no, but he was saying, I said, you know, I was really glad you went on that Fox hit was really really smart, right, He just like took a case by case.
And then he was on CNBC the next day.
But he said he saw the Fox guy he's on Yo Kovudo's team setting up, and he went over there and was like, do you want to have me on?
And they were like.
Yeah, And he went on THEO Vaughn's podcast, which is like a very bro we kind of Trump friendly podcast, like not political, and I thought they had a very casual conversation. We need that out there and.
Pete and repeat the other day.
He's great, Pete goes everywhere, but as a gay me and Pete like, are we the best people for this option? I mean, like I also like to rip my shirt off at the bar, but it's kind of a different scene than the kind of shirt ripping off that Hull Cogan is doing. And so getting more guys out there to do this, I think he's important. So I'm glad Mark even's doing it. Though My point is just like.
He shouldn't be alone right now.
You know, there are a lot of business guys out there. There a lot of sports figures. I talk obsessively about all the never trial. You know, there's in the myths, and we should mentioned Liz. Liz is out.
There, change, Liz is out there.
It's just like, why can we name all the people that are out there? Shun't shouldn't be an overwhelming, you know, sort of force speaking out And that's the thing that concerns me.
No, I think that's a really good point. And Liz is out there, and Dick has endorsed too. I mean, I think there's a question. Look, Those people are not out there to convince liberals to vote for Harris. They're out there to provide the permission structure and break through the mainstream media and me make the case to low information voters that this is the most important election of all of our lives.
Yeah, and there are many different groups, right, I mean, like we obviously at the bullwork, like we talked mostly about these sort of middle high income, college educated suburban men, mostly because their wives already voting for Kamala, and how to nudge them. That's an important group. There was a moment right when the campaign, right when the switch happened, right where Charlie tweets Kamala's brat and Beyonce is out there and Megan the Statability did that recently. That was
really good. That's great. I like that that's happening. But again, I just I want to be insatiable because everything matters here. And I think that the celebrity types kind of reaching out to younger people, getting them out is important. Like
there are a few different areas. Another group that I'm obsessed with that I don't think that gets enough attention is non college white women and trying to have people talk to them like rural women about about dobbs being post doobs and being like, you know, just because your husbands for Trump or your ex husband's for Trump, doesn't mean you have to be. And so I think that's
the key. So anyway, all this stuff, all this stuff is going to matter on the margins because unfortunately, this thing is is is going to be close, and it's too close. It's too close for comfort.
Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point.
And I mean you saw those little nodes that women are leaving each other in the bathroom.
Nobody knows, needs to know your vote.
You know.
Again, that's smart, right, I mean those are the things that Hillary Clinton world did not do because there was this belief, this inherent belief that Trump was so ridiculous that no one would ever elect impress.
Yeah, that was a real problem. It's funny, there's some of the listeners on this show feel this way. Sometimes I get frustrated with my new progressive and liberal allies because they'll be like kam was definitely gonna win. Stop down talking her, or like stop talking about this polls like it's great, everything's great. We need to be hoping. I'll hope him. Hey, look, if you want positivity in your life, I'm for it. You know, whatever keeps you going.
I'm not judging, but just as a strategic political matter, you cannot object to the fact that Hillary was harmed by the perception that she was clearly going to win because there were people that did not vote for her that would have voted for her. I just interviewed one. Michael medved a conservative talk radio host basically the only national one who kept his integrity during the Trump era,
lost his show, got replaced by Seb Gorka. That tells you everything about the devolution of the Republican Party that this guy, the smart, thoughtful, very you know, steeped in history. Conservative radio host got replaced by Seb Gorka. So anyway, but he was like his vote general mantics who lived in Seattle, but he's represented other people, you know where He's like, I didn't vote for Hillary because I didn't think if I thought that Trump could win, I would
voted for Hillary. And there were people out there like that. And there were people who didn't show up because they didn't think that they didn't think it mattered. Who are liberals? And there are people who wrote in Jill Stein on the other side of the you know, ideological spectrum. So I don't like that, and I like the Harris campaign has not fallen into that trap at all, by the way, which Cherry had been consistent on, we're running like we're behind, and that's good.
Yeah, But I think that's a really good point. And I think the sort of the ridiculousness of Trump and trump Ism really did help him both win, and the fact that he seemed to like completely unelectable did actually help him win. You had an amazing moment during the debate where you were talking in the spin room.
Can you talk about that.
I was having so much fun, Molly.
You seem like you were having a.
The time of my life in that spin room, because as much as happy as Democrats were about calm was a big night around the spinner room. And they're surrogates and they all seemed happy, none of them seemed as happy as me. And you know why. You know why, It's because they don't know these assholes like I do. And so I got to have the added joy of really appreciating their suffering in a way that the Democrats
kind of do. Right, Like You're like, I don't like Corey Lewandowski in a distant way, and he deserves some suffering. But like I know him. I've been in meetings with him. I know I got hit checked by him. Like I know these people. If I don't know them, I know
their type. I got to go to the Spin Room with its one guy, David Bossi, who one time made an anti gay joke in a meeting I was in, not knowing I was gay, And so, you know, it just kind of gives you just a little insight into his morality and the type of person that he is. I had the biggest shitting and grin on my face when I went up to him, and I like, David got some questions for you about the debate. I wonder
now when Sony. That was fun. And then I and then me and Lindsay Graham got into a very heated dispute. Me and Lindsay new know each other quite well, and I was just I was teasing him and trying to be like, hey, this is your moment, go back to twenty sixteen, Lindsay, never Trump. Lindsay, this is your moment. Get off the ship. The water's warm, we'll welcome you.
And he did not like that, and instead of going along with the joking, he shouted at me and told me I should be ashamed of myself, what for supporting Kamala because of the conservative policies that are being I don't know, it's the kind of shit you need to convince yourself to sleep at night that like you're the righteous one. And then I told him no, he should be ashamed of himself. And then we yelled back and
forth for a while because he's a politician. At the very end of the fight, he tried to make up with me. And when he tried to make up with me, I was like, okay, but you can admit that, like the debate prep team was really bad, right, And he was like, oh yeah, the debate prep team should totally be fired and Mack's UNTILSI are awful. And I was like, thanks, Lindsay immediately tweeting this. I'm tweeting this. Then he like an hour later had like post a damage control Instagram post.
So it's like, mister Trump did a great job. Like don't listen to it. The people at the fake news is it saying? So it was fun agreed time. I'm sad that it seems like Trump doesn't want a debate again, because I was looking forward to doing it all over again. I wanted an encore.
One of the sort of unspoken stories of this cycle, I think is the complete train Wreckerry in Congress. You know, they've done nothing. One of the things I love about Mike Johnson is how bad he is at this job. So he was going to do all these messaging bills and he was going to be it was going to be Woke Week. By the way, the one time I heard about Woke Week, I think was reading Punchball, like a week before, and then you never heard about it again.
But they voted on messaging bills, they.
Voted on washing machines, and then he was unable to do this Citizen Voting Act, which was just psychodrama and the hopes of making it you know whatever.
I mean.
Have you ever seen a Congress as badly roun And this is two part question, what is going to happen to Matt Gates?
Dying to know what would have happened on woke Week? You know, good Robin DeAngelo in there. I don't know, It's like, low, what are you gonna do? What was the point was the idea I have seen a Congress is badly run. Actually, Kevin McCarthy's Congress, the exact previous one to this one before that had been a while. Mike Johnson at least did the Ukraine deal, so they
did that, But we are steering down the barrel. Can I just say, like, even if Kamala wins, I'm sure a lot of people will want to kind of take a deep breath and check out, and.
I'll respect that.
But like the Christmas deadline that he's now set up, like the government is going to run out of money Christmas, then you'd have January sixth, two point zero, and you know Mike Johnson potentially needing votes again to be the speaker, and so like all the crazies will be able to hold him hostage. Like the end of this year into January in the House is going to be insane, and Mike Johnson is not up for the challenge at all. I don't know what's going to happen to mac Gates.
The mac Gates Kevin McCarthy thing is like such an Iran Iraq war situation.
True, there's no one.
So everyone saw I find myself Matt Gates nailed Kevin McCarthy there and then I'm like, that was a good one, Matt, And I'm like, no, bad tim. Don't think about that. So I really, honestly, I just have closely to know.
But there's an ethics investigation into Matt Gates, which he's like so freaked out about, and I'm like, it's an ethics investigation in Congress.
They're not going to find anything. They never find anything.
Yeah, he's been subpoenat, I guess by his colleagues.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's going to be ugly. The House Republican situation is going to be ugly. I mean they're in some ways. Mike Johnson honestly is just begging for the Democrats to win so he can be a minority leader because minority leader is an easy job. Speaker is a hard job.
Yeah.
The Republicans in Long Island, d Esposito, who recently put his mistress on his payroll in his district office. You have ds Posito, you have Santos Lolda. That is a real rogue rogues gallery.
It is.
And even the supposed good one, Mike Lawler, is like he does ever do anything good? You know, he just doesn't do the bad stuff. He just doesn't do any of Like the cre just doesn't go along with the craziest stuff. Like he's not out there being like Haitians eat animals, but like he doesn't actually do anything to separate himself in a meaningful way from the Maga Republicans, and Monde's running against him. So no, the New York is I think the other thing, and this is you know,
more in your wheelhouse, Molly. But like I think a big advantage for the Democrats in the House this year is a lot of these Republican gains in the House were in blue states, I think because abortion was a lower salience issue, you know, because like if I live on Long Island, I think, I think overturn of Row is bad, but like I live in Long Island, like abortions legal here, it's not. I don't have to worry
about my daughter or my niece or whatever. And now with like the prospect of Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, you know, kind of running the show, it's a higher salience issue for everybody, no matter where you live. And I think that's great problems for those guys in addition to them just being like a total clown car of buffoonery.
Yeah, I mean I think so too.
Again, Like, this is the thing with all of these poles, right, if she's overperforming by these numbers, there's the thinking is that she'll flip a bunch of congressional seats, especially seeds
where Biden won. My general anxiety with all these poles, besides the fact is that they're wildly inaccurate, though they are showing a good trajectory for her, is my anxiety is there are so many of these poles where the bottom of the ticket, you know that you've got to send a candidate winning by ten points, and then you have them dead even at the top of the ticket, and that math doesn't make sense.
The math really doesn't make sense in Arizona. I like the math and a lot of the other states besides the Mountain West, because what you see really is Casey and Pennsylvania Baldwin like running ahead of Kamala, and the margin like on the ballot, they're pretty similar, and you kind of you know, there's just some undecided and so you kind of think that they will probably end up converging in those blue wall states in a way that
is beneficial for the Democrats. I got to tell you, I'm just at a loss about what's happening in Arizona and Nevada. And you know, Jackie Rosen and Diego winning by a million points and Kamala and Trumping tied. And I know Carrie Lake is horrible and Reuben's a good candidate, so I guess that kind of makes sense. But there's a seventeen point gap between Diego and Kama that does
make many sense. And then in Nevada, I mean, Jackie Rosen is a good person, but it's not like she has this great brand or is like super famous or popular, you know what I mean. It's not like, oh, I get it. Why would Jackie Rosen be running so far ahead of it. There's something funky in the numbers out there. And I don't know if they're struggling to pull Hispanics or waited. I know that Polsters have to have had trouble with Hispanics in the past because the Spanish speaking
element and getting the right mix. I don't know, it's just a theory.
It's possible.
With the top of the ticket, what they're doing is they're addressing for this Trump electorate, right If that electorate comes out, they're going to leave the bottom of the ticket blank or they're going to vote for the Democrat. I just have trouble if you were a MAGA voter who the last time you voted was twenty sixteen, you're going to go out there and be like, I haven't voted in almost a decade, but I'm going to be a split ticket voter because I want a Democratic Congress to check my guy.
I mean, that doesn't make any sense.
The only thing that makes sense about why the gap is so big out there. But again, this is only like two points, it's not seventeen points, right, But like I do think conceivably that we've seen some slippage among Hispanic voters at the time, and so maybe that there's some Myspanic voters that look at Reuben Guago, they know him, he's been there, he's a Hispanic and like he cares at the border, and they've been Democrats. These Suspans have
been Democrats. And like, for whatever reason, if talking about Hispanic men, YOUNGESTUK men were seeing that, like there's some Trump ap you like, I don't get it. I'm just
saying I don't, but I don't understand why. But I recognize that there's some evidence that that's happening, so there could be some gap among Hispanic voters there who had been Democrats who are now kind of mega curious, but like still, that explains two points difference, not the fact that this literally this Fox poll had Ruben up by thirteen and Trump up by three. Like, that's not going to happen. There's going to be split ticket. There are
some split ticket voters out there. People are weird, but not one in five voters are not going to split between Rubin and Donald Trump.
Tim Miller, thank you so much for joining us, Molly, I love you.
We'll be talking to you soon.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a broadcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country.
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David Rubinstein is the co founder of the Carlisle Group. Welcome to Fast Politics, David Rubinstein.
Thank you very much, my pleasure to be here.
You have been writing these history books.
I mean they're not just history. There conversations with presidents. But just explain to us how you got into this.
So I became the president of the Economic Club of Washington about fifteen years ago, and I was supposed to bring business people in to speak, but I found that business people were boring and putting people into sleep. So I decided I would change the format and I would just interview them. And it turned out it for a
couple of years. People thought that I had a good interview style, use some humor and other things, and so Bloomberg actually put it on television, My Interviews, and I have a show and a couple of shows on Bloomberg where I do it, and I also do it at the New York Historical Society and they put them on PBS on History kind of interview show. For whatever reason, I've been doing a lot of interviews, and then I decided to take the interviews and put them together in
book form. And so why just most recently have a book out on the Presidency where I took interviews I've done with presidents people have served or living presidents, and then combined that with interviews I've done about scholars on
people like Washington or Lincoln, and combine that. So the most recent book called The Highest Calling, and it's a fifth one of my interview kind of compilations, and this one talks about the presidency, my own views of having worked in the White House and what it's like to work with a president, what it's like to work in the White House, and my own views on the presidents that I've interviewed.
Yeah, it seems to me there's a lot to be said about what the experience is like, and people are very interested in it. The thing that I'm so struck by, because we just came off that Trump presidency, hopefully not going back again.
Was that there tends to be that the.
Presidency elevates the person in it, except sometimes right.
Well, I call my book the highest calling, and what I mean by that is it's the most important job in the world. We have about what's seven and a half to eight billion people in the world. The only job that everybody in the world probably cares about what the person's doing, is the president of the United States.
And so as we get close to an election, now people are focused on it all over the world, who's going to be the president United States because they know that what that president does will change the lives of people in the United States but also to lives of
people all over the world. So people are obsessed with who the president United States is going to be because even though the president might win by a narrow margin, once he is elected or she's elected, that narrow margin will evaporate in the sense that people that the president will have the power to do very significant things and won't have to be encumbered the fact that they won very narrowly.
Yeah, it does seem like you don't necessarily need to have a mandate to still govern as if you have a mandate.
Correct Well, for example, take the House of Representatives or take the Senate. Suppose you came from Mars and you observe that the Senate majority is one vote and the House majority is two votes. You would say, well, presumably that both sides in the Senate and the House should get along with each other. Goes If you're operating in the House you only have a two seed majority, why not cooperate with the other side and get somebody down the middle. That's obviously not what we do. The same
is true in the Senate. We do things where just having a one vote majority allows you or two seed majority allows you do things that are really going to be anathetical to the interest of the very significant minority. It's a strange way to run a government, but that's the system we now have.
Yeah, you worked in the White House a while ago.
Can you explain to us it seems like there's such a shift, like so much of American politics was sort of predicated on this kind of gentility that sort of surrounded the job, and that kind of fell away in sort of the advent of Newt Giningridge, and I think it's continued.
Is that correct? And do you notice that difference?
Yes? And now, remember we've had presidents who've been vilified from the beginning. Washington was vilified as present that Jefferson. People talked about his slave mistress while he was President of United States. People have been vilifying presidents for quite some time. I'd say the atmosphere in Washington today is fairly bad, though, because people raise money in politics they greater extent than ever, and you raise it from the
far left and the far right. There's very little money to be raised by saying to somebody, I'm going to do write something right down the middle, and I'm going to have a compromise that's going to make everybody happy. Nobody gives you money for that. Somebody on the far left of the far right will give you money. So
it is a bizarre situation we have. Presidents are now more vilified than ever, to some extent that they're always revilified, But now you have something called social media, and in social media, everybody is an editor, everybody's an author, everybody's an expert. And as a result, you've got more people talking about what they don't like about the president we've ever had before.
Right, I mean though, talking about something where you don't like the president isn't necessarily making the president less good, right, Like some of the discourse may be good, right.
Well, the scorts is always good, and you always want people to talking about policies and what governments are doing, because an effective democracy works and only have citizens really participated and they're informed. But right now the vilification of our leaders is awful, and probably some of that vilification is leading the violence in many places.
Oh absolutely, it's so much of American politics. We saw violence in the sixties and we've seen assassination attempts since then. But I have been struck by how this spate of violence is pretty new. Right.
Well, we have a lot of violence because we have a lot of television shows that people see violence and it just make believe on television sometimes, but people get caught up in it. Also, I have to be honest, it's not that difficult to buy a gun in the United States. I think we have more guns in the United States than we have people. There's violence everywhere, but take a country that where there's very few guns, like Japan.
Now the prime minister was assassinated not long ago, Prime Minister Abbe, But generally you don't see a lot of shootings in Japan and Europe. It's hard to get a gun too, But the United States, we have a second Amendment, and it kind of protects people's rights to own guns as it's been interpreted by the Supreme Court. So it's fairly violent society. You have to be very careful these days.
You've both worked in government and a business.
Right now, there's this sort of moment where a lot of wealthy people are supporting presidential candidate who will not necessarily be a steward of the economy. I think that's a fair assessment of Donald Trump. Are these wealthy people supporting him just because of the tax cut or is there more to it.
Well, there are wealthy people on both sides, to be honest, But I would say a lot of business people worry about their businesses, and I think they feel that there'll be less regulation under Donald Trump, less ani trust enforcement under Donald Trump, and lower taxes for business people and corporation under Donald Trump. So I think that's one of
the reasons that they support him. I think some people would say that they don't know Kamala Harris as well as they know Donald Trump, and so some people were worried about our positions. But you know, it's hard to say why people are supporting people. My main point in the book, though, is that you should learn about the presidents,
learn as much as you can, and actually vote. We have one hundred and sixty million people who voted last time in the presidential election, one hundred and sixty million, but eighty million people who are Americans did not vote, who are eligible to vote. Eighty million legal citizens who have the right to vote did not vote. And I think we'd have a better democracy of more people who could vote actually did vote.
No question, And why do you think people don't vote?
Well? The electoral college system we have makes some people think their vote is irrelevant. So let's suppose you're a Republican living in California. You know your vote isn't going to mean that much in the presidential election. Let's suppose you're a Democrat living in Mississippi. Your vote isn't going to mean that much in the presidential system. That's one factor.
Another factor is that for low income people sometimes it's hard to get the voting polls, and some people don't really know how to fill out the forms for right end ballots, and some places are them making harder to vote than it was before. I think some legislation was passed a few years ago in some states which makes it much harder to do a right end vote or something like that that. I think some people don't vote because it's inconvenient. Some people don't vote because they think
their vote won't matter. Some people just don't care and they just don't participate in government anyway.
Yeah, but there's also like a real legacy of Jim Crow and disenfranchisement. Right, there are voters like, for example, I think about Mississippi, Right, that's a state where there should be way more representation of people of color than there is in the voting. So, I mean, do you think there's more of an opportunity to legislate sort of more protection for voters there.
Well, there have been efforts to legislate more protection, but it's been turned down by the Supreme Court. As you know, the Supreme Court did some things that many people think were not helpful in the enforcement of the Voting Rights Acts of nineteen sixty five, and that's the law of the land now. Those faults to go around. But generally people are not voting in the numbers you would want
them to vote. In other Western democracies, you have a much higher percentage in almost every Western democracy than the United States of people voting.
I think of you as someone who's studied government a lot and talk to people. Right now, we have a Supreme Court. It's very uneven right at six ' three. There are two justices.
One was sworn in was sort of Obama was denied a justice by Mitch McConnell. He was sworn in right after the Trump election, and the other was sworn in as people were voting for Biden. Do you think there's a fix for the court, and if so, what do you think would be the least disruptive.
I think any change at this point is not likely to occur. I just don't think Congress is going to adopt any changes to the court. I think it's just not realistic. In my judgment. President Biden has made some suggestions. One of them is that after you've served I think twenty years, you would no longer be eligible to serve on the court. Some people to suggest age limits. It's two partisan now, and I just don't think that the people who are happy with the Supreme Court are going
to support any changes in the foreseeable future. So if you're a prominent Republican and you're happy with a Supreme Court, you're not going to spport a shade is because right now the court's doing what you are happy.
With, right. Can we talk about Chevron? Sure, So, Chevron is.
This decision that tried to sort of take expertise out of the federal government right to make it so that experts weren't deciding the laws, that the judiciary could have more power. That's a start of contrast to how it was in the seventies and eighties. Can you explain to us sort of the flip and sort of what you think the future is with that.
Well, what you're referring to is there was a doctrine that the Supreme Court had previously issued which said that in deciding how to administer the laws, there should be great deference to the federal administrators, the government agencies that presumably have the expertise. The Supreme Court more recently has said no, that difference this shouldn't be given because you really need to give the difference to members of Congress.
They were elected. And so that tends to make it a little bit more political in the sense that if you're deferring to members of Congress about what is appropriate or not, and not deferring to the federal agencies, which are presumably civil service kinds of operations. Then you are changing the outcome of administrative decisions. In other words, if Republicans have the White House, Republicans have the Congress, they're going to have different views, it's thought, than the civil servants,
whom many believe are more democratic in their orientation. So it's a big, big swing in terms of how the outcome of regulations and laws are going to be interpreted.
What do you think about that.
Well, it's a complicated issue. I'm not sure I'm expert enough to comment on it intelligently, but I think it's clearly the case that we were politicizing administrative decisions in some ways, and it really depends on who's in power to figure out whether you're going to do certain things or not. I think the federal government is a really complicated thing to run, and it's not easily run by in my view, some of the decisions that have been
made by legislators and others in recent years. But more complicated than just I can talk about right now.
Right when you are sort of looking back on the kind of presidents, who do you think is this sort of deeply underrated president.
Well, okay, Harry Truman was underrated and he left office very unpopular, and now he's seen as having been a pretty good president. My forward boss, Jimmy Carter left office under a crushing defeat by Ronald Reagan, and now people recognize that some of the things he did, like the Camp David Accords, the promoting of human rights to creating the Department of Energy, Department of Education, civil Service reform, Panama Canal Treaty were pretty good things to do. And
Carter's ex presidency has also made him fairly popular. As we approach his one hundredth birthday, I think people are reassessing Jimmy Carter, so some presidents become less popular. Woo Joe Wilson was seen as a pretty great president at the time that he was president and rafree left. But now we know that he had his wife really running the country for eighteen months because he had a stroke
that incapacitated him. And he also resegregated the federal workforce, and we recognize now that he had some racist instincts that were not good. You know, his reputation's going down. Andrew Jackson's reputation is going down. He's now seen as not a great leader of the Democratic Party, but a man who was a race and that person who really tried to kill a lot of Native Americans.
Yeah, what do you think is sort of the most important trait that a president should have.
Worrying about the country more than his or her own personal well being, Having the ability to articulate what he or she believes in an effective way. Being honest is a good thing as well. I would say humility is also a virtue that I think Lincoln had and I think other great presidents have had, and I think that's something we should look at as well. But also a person who really focuses on what is best for the country as opposed to what's best for me politically or personally.
Just making sure you've got somebody that really is focused on the country.
Yeah, that's been a really I think useful message in the Harris campaign is to talk about how self centered Trump is.
Now. The Harris campaign is trying to do something it's very difficult, which is to go for a running start. Just a few months before the election, you know, it was generally thought that Joe Biden would be the nominee, and then all of a sudden She's asked to put together a national campaign in a few weeks, which is very hard to do. So it's not an easy task
to undertake. And I you know, now, the polling data is very close, and all the political experts that I talk to tell me they can't tell me who's got to be the next president United States. They also tell me that it's not likely we'll know on Tuesday night of the election day because absentee ballots doesn't really start sometimes until the next day after the election. So we could be not knowing who the president is or who controls Congress for a week or two or three or even longer.
What do you think Harris could be doing that would be useful? That she's not doing.
Well, There is a general view that if she gave more interviews it would be good by some people. Remember, though, the people that want interviews to most are the people in the press, right. You know, people aren't marching on Washington d C. I'm sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue as we talk. Nobody's marching down Pennsylvania Avenue is saying we want more
Kamala Harris interviews. And that's not a marching kind of issue. So, yeah, I think it would be not a terrible thing to give more interviews, but I think she's doing more now. In that regard, the most important thing we should do is try to make sure that everybody votes, people get informed. I think in her case, being more public about her positions will probably help her with the Business Committee. The Business Committee is more worried about her than maybe they
should be. I think a Donald Trump's case, I think he's got to be more forthcoming about what he plans to do as president, because he said he doesn't support the twenty twenty five program that the Heritage Foundation came up with. But if he doesn't support that, then he should be more forthcoming about what he would like to do.
Thank you so much, David, all right.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
No moments.
Jesse Cannon, Malli Jung Fast, I gotta tell you, I'm heartbroken. I believe to Elon Musk that he was a free speech absolutist because when he says something, he's always taught the truth that he never contradicts it. But I saw that after ken Klippenstein posts JD. Vantz's Apple research file, he banned him.
Ken Klippenstein is an independent journalized finally out of the annoyance of the fact that no one in the mainstream media was publishing this hacked material. It was Jadie Vance's oppo file. There's other stuff that leaked and nobody was publishing it. Because now people have decided not to publish hacked material. I think the Clinton campaign from twenty sixteen with like a word, but what's interesting?
I think about this story two things.
One is Clippenstein then gets banned or gets suspended from X because Elon must doesn't really care about free speech. He really just cares about helping his people, right elevating Trump.
And then the other.
Thing, which I think is sort of interesting about it, is there's just not a lot of new.
Stuff in the oppo file. It's a lot of stuff we've seen.
So that makes a little more sense as to why they're not publishing it is that it's just not so interesting anyway. It's still very annoying to those of us who lived through twenty sixteen. And we'll see if Ken gets taken back on X.
It's mostly just not interesting because it seems the Harris team did such a job finding most of the stuff, and they've outed most of it already.
Yeah.
I mean I also just think, like with all of this stuff, like with the Mark Robinson stuff in North Carolina, it's all stuff we kind of thought.
It's just a little worse.
Pats the picture a little bit brighter of all the bad things he says about women.
It's not a surprise to anyone paying attention.
Well, I'm sure it's a big surprise to all the people who whined about Hunter Biden's laptop being sensorted on Twitter.
I don't think they care.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.