Tim Miller, Charlie Savage & Justin Wolfers

Then we'll talk to the New York Times Charlie Savage about Trump's latest legal troubles and the media manipulation he created or added. But first we have the host of the next level, The Bullworks, Tim Miller. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, Tim Miller. By second appearance, I'm going for that green jacket. How many appearances do I need to get jacket? After forty five appearances, we buy you a green jacket. Okay, great, I'll hold you to that. Forty

three more to go. So Trump has neither been arrested nor indicted. I have purple blue balls like I've been waiting for it all week. I've just been waiting for this to pop the champagne, and it sucks. It is it's been disappointing. Definitely, folks got played by Trump. There were a lot of whispers out there that he was

going to get indicted. I don't think I would have, you know, bought into this Tuesday arrest that he put on his pretend Twitter that he has if it wasn't for the fact that, like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, your little TV producers were texting me. There were whispers, you know, things were happening. Trump's Kid's going to happen. And so then when Trump sent out the fake the bleat, you know, it felt real. But alas it hasn't been,

though hopefully it's imminent there. We had a great bullwork article this week. Do you know there's probably there are six different investigations active into him right now. Six it's just one of six. Well, there's Georgia, there's New York, there's Jack Smiths Action one, there's one into truth Social and there's the classified docs. Right But I want to like real talk with you for a second. Even if we see something from these six, I don't think it

hurts him. This has been the conventional wisdom out there, and I don't I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I do want to offer a potentially more hopeful take, a more bright eye take, which is that the weight of all of this overtime compounds. Right like, Trump was at his weakest a few months ago because the news environment around him was so awful. As the election had

gone bad, Trump had endorsed these terrible candidates. There was the January sixth committee that was going on all of these investigations, and that's when in some of these poles run de Sanctis was beating him, right, and some of these had the headpoles at that time, right right, And that was a real thing that there are Republican voters that still like Trump that are susceptible to you know, a series of bad news environments that make them feel like he can't win. Right. If they feel like he

can't win, they won't go with them. And so, you know, I think that right now, in the short term, sure, it's been a little booie. People want to stand by their man, They want to come to his defense, you know, but over time, if this one drops and then another one drops, and then another one drops, which is what I expect to happen, then I think the weight of all of that, and the fact that like this guy's got like four different arraignments coming up in a nine

week period. It might make you know, have not his core MAGA folks, right, Not the core magas they're never going to go, but this this wishy washy group, but the key group in the Republican primary, which is people that we like Trump but we're not sure are we ready to go on the ride a third time? Or do we just want to give him a gold watch and put them on Mountain Rushmore and say, you know,

we're ready to move on? Right? Like that person. You know, I think right now it's helping Trump with that person, but I think over time it could go the other way. Let's talk about this because we had Sarah Longwell on this podcast and the Best and I'm a big fan of hers, and she talks to a lot of people, but she and she talks to a lot of people. She talks to more people than any of us, right,

because she is doing these focus groups. She said that, you know, she really feels like Jasantis is less dangerous than Trump. I disagreed with her pretty strongly on that. What is your take on that? Like in this imaginary world where one of them is the president. Yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to hear your disagreement. I would side with Sarah. And the simple answer is this Trump has now been through this one time. He's been in there

four years. He tried the oh, I'm going to have some adults around, the John Kelly's and the and the Maddises, and as as gross as all those people were in how complicit they were, at some level, it was a bumper around him, right, Like his craziest ideas didn't go through, you know those Gary Cohn was like not was literally not putting things on his desk and like pocket vetelling things that government should work, by the way, but whatever, okay,

this next time around. The types of people that around him right now are absolute lunatics. It's the dregs of the dregs. And I think he would feel so embolded to do whatever he wants. I think that he goes a little kind of a scared little mouse that first year, and he didn't think he was gonna win. He couldn't believe he's gonna win, So he did plenty of damaging ship and it was plenty horrible. But I just think a second Trump term is like literally an extinction level

event potentially for the democracy. I don't want to like scare people, but that's where I'm It's like a move to Mexico City, cut level events, and like the Scantis is bad and I and we could go through all the things I don't like about what the Santis is doing in Florida, but I do think he would bring the adults in and you know, they might be more effective at at enacting some of these policies that that progressives don't like that I don't like in certain cases.

But I just think that like the worst case scenario is just literally catastrophic, the end of American upper Trump and for de Santis, it's like this is bad, right, right, rights.

My question for you, I actually think that Trump is a sort of known quantity and desands is really really hyper focused and very effective, and in my mind, these two things make him and he's also and again you know, I have many LGBTQ people in my life, present company included, you included, but he has really made this the target for him in a way we have never seen. I mean in my lifetime, I have never seen or at

least in the last twenty years. I've never seen someone really hone in to a group of people who where everything is settled law, same sex marriage is fucking codified, and the man is just going after gay people in a way that I don't think in my head I could have even imagined. Yeah, very few people have been as vocally upset about the don't Say Gay bill in particular in Florida as I was. I wrote about it and you will have a child, Yeah, I have a child,

and that's why I wrote about her. Very early on. I was like, this is crazy, This is insane, this idea that a kindergarten her. You know that my child couldn't come home and do a homework assignment. You know about a family tree that some karen in Florida, you know, could sue the school over that. That's literally the rule. The fact that teachers couldn't talk to my kid about her own family. Yeah, that is outrageous. What he's been doing, obviously,

talking to transfolks in drag is also outrageous. As the head to head with Trump comparison thing, another thing that you've had with the santass I just wanted to pop this bubble a little bit about his effectiveness. He's been pretty effective. But a lot of these bills are unconstitutional. You know, our mutual friend Roddie Kaplan is working on the Don't Say Gay Bill and pushing that out. She's

the best. The Woodstop Woke Act has already been overturned. Right, A lot of this stuff is just nakedly unconstitutional, and so I actually don't know that he's quite He's a little bit more deft about it and puts a shinier coat of paint on it than Trump does. Right, but still it's still unconstitutional, and still we've had courts, you know.

Hold that. I think that there are specific areas, and the LGBT area maybe prime among them, where De Santis would likely be, you know, more effective and more narrowly focused, you know, on on getting legislation that I don't like. Past again, I would strongly support Joe Biden overrun to Santis.

I don't think it's even a close call head to head against Trump, where it's like, Okay, we can fight this piece of legislation, right, we can fight what he wants to do in schools which run to Santa's versus, like this dude might literally take us out of NATO and end the you know, Western World alliance and threaten the very fabric of our democracy. Like that's just how I how I assess that. But um, you know, no,

it's not good either way. I wish that. I wish the other option on the other side was Chris Sanuno or somebody that you know, we could charitably agree and disagree on various That's not the case. And both of them are very bad. I just assess Donald Trump to be end times level. So they're set. It's quite interesting to me. I have to say that snow he had an opportunity to differentiate himself and he and he didn't. Yeah, you know, he went right along with Trump. I dislike

Chris Christie a lot. Yeah, you're not alone. Yeah, we have a we have a actually a party every year. It's a secret location because unfortunately, people would be storming the gates to get in. It's just such a popular ticket to Chris Christie hate party. But you know, he at least would be able to go toe to toe with Trump, right, and all these other guys are just such politicians. And the problem is he just has all this baggage now from everything from Bridge Gates. Just is

never Trump stuff. I just don't think the MAGA voters are going to listen to him. But that snow New is a nice guy, and I disagree with him on certain things, agree with him on others. He would certainly be much preferable in the other two that it's just like this guy isn't gonna be able to go toe

to toe on the stage. It's just not where the party is, right, Like, the party wants MAGA, and they're trying to decide do we want the OG MEGA, who's who might not be electable anymore and we're a little nervous about, you know, all of his baggage, or do we want a MEGA that is pretty close to the OG but you know we might be able to convince ourselves as more electable. That like, that is basically what's happening in the Republican primary. And I think anyone that

doesn't fit in that MEGA world doesn't really have a chance. Yeah, it's amazing, Right, we are in a situation here where like if a Republican had been brave, there would be an alternative. Well, I go back to the second impeachment. Had ten more Republicans voted to convict him, we'd be

done with him. This is the thing that drives me the most crazy right now, Molly, is all these guys who you know, just want to be rid of Trump and who are like slowly pushing the scantist you at the chip Roys of the world, and you know people in the Senate who are out there talking about how you know, I just, John Thune, I just trust that the voters won't do this again. Why are you trusting them?

Why didn't we just do your job, John Thune. Had seventeen Republicans voted to convict him, he would would have been he would have been borrowed from running, and all of this would be moot, and we could have it out on stage between the Santis and Haley and Pompeo, and you know, all those guys can right and you could have a real primary. Yeah, they were cowards. They failed again for the one hundred millionth time since twenty fifteen to do their job, and so now they're getting

stuck with them again. And so there's a little bit, you know, if the stakes were so high, there'd be a little bit of schadenfreud there. It's like it's like, all right, John Thune, you're getting back in, you know, with you're getting in back in the muttering with the pig again. Good luck, enjoy it. But but unfortunately the stakes are too high for me to kind of fully

fully appreciate the schadenfreud of that. Yeah, no, me too, And I think I would like to keep our Democrats say there's a world in which like there's some Republican who stands up to him, But I guess not because that's not where the base is and the numbers aren't there. Yeah, I mean, sure, stand up. Yeah, I think that they're going to be some to push back on him, but are they going to do it? Well? Right, I got

PTSD this week. I don't know about you. When robah Santis went to Peers and and was like, well, you know, I mean donalds was, I don't know a whole lot about this world of paying off porn stars. And I would have been a little tougher than him on Fauci. And you know, these kind of limp attacks on you know that are like not really attacks, Like you know, Donald's like ripping his face off. You're a groomer, you might be gay, you're a whole ball, right, Donald, And

he's like, well, I'm not so sure. He's doing the normal politician stuff. And I was like, we I we did this already in twenty sixteen. I was like, I lived through this. You know, everyone did this. Scott Walker tried this, Jeb tried this, Marco trying to Ted Cruz. Right, it's like, this strategy doesn't work. You know where Trump goes alpha predator and you you know, kind of do a light jab back at him, right, and they're they're

living We're just living through this all again. Pompeo, Hailey deciantists are all making the same mistakes that we're made in twenty sixteen. Like the only path to beating him is to either go is to either go through him or tomorrow complete yeah, completely an alternative vision and hope he self destructs. I don't think that that would work. That's second path don't work, but it might it could, we don't know, like a year from now. But the

person who does that is Lisz Chainy. She's there, she did it right well, I mean but she's these megafolks aren't going to vote from it, liszt change. I mean, she's primary so yeah, so that and that's like going around and like by supporting Democrats. But I mean, like, hypothetically, I think you can get in and say, look, I think Donald Trump's kind of pathetic, and I'm just gonna focus on here's all the things that I do. I

don't know that that. I don't know that that would work, but but at least then you know you're offering something to people, right, which is like here, I'm maga two, I'm mega like you. I don't think that that what he's gonna do is work. It's kind of sad how he's lashing out and I'm just gonna focus on this other stuff and I'm gonna ignore him. Now, maybe that wouldn't work. Maybe you have to just punch his face out, and that's I'm surely your old friend Rick Wilson would say.

But either of those are at least viable options. Getting in and like, you know, doing this like pillow fight with him while he's like gnawing that you're a jugular is not like that doesn't work right, right, And yet they're all doing it again. It is interesting. The thing with the Santis that I never understand is like, if you could have Trump, why would you have the guy

who's like lesser Trump. I think the hope is again when you think about the Median Republican voter, right, like the so there's some people, you know, let's take out the people who are like Liz Cheney curious and take out the people who are storming the capital for Trump, right, like, but they're all those folks out. What percentage of voters

are those that we're talking about. You've got maybe ten percent at best, probably a little less than that that are never, you know, that are totally off the train of Trump. Then you've got probably twenty five percent that are Trump always, Trump forever, right, And and we can all we could quibble. It might be fifteen on one side,

twenty thirty on the other. Right, but let's just let's just say the big middle sixty percent fifty percent of the party is people that like Trump but having one hundred percent the side of their Trump forever, okay, And like that is the center of the party right now.

They might just decide I like Trump, I thought it was good, but man, I don't know, I'm really sick of losing to Democrats, and you know, he's got all this other, all this other stuff happening that I'm not so sure about in the tweets, and it was fun for a little while, but I might be already changed the channel, right like, but again, I really do like him, and I don't like it when the Libs are mean to him, right Like, that person is the key person

in determining who's going to be the Republican nominee. And so the hope was that DeSantis could win that person over by being Trump like. But like, in practice you can see why that doesn't work because Trump goes straight for your head. Like Trump's gonna push him down to the ten. He's like, oh, you want to try to

win these people who like me? Okay, well I'm gonna make that And so like that might work again a vacuum, right if you had an academic study and you know ran the primary out and you know in imaginary land that the Desanta strategy might work. But in real land, where Trump is crushing you, it's a lot harder to pull off. It's prediction time. Oh god, And by the way, if you're wrong, you don't get the blue coat or the green coat, okay, the green jacket after actually be

right in every prediction. Yeah, yeah, it's a very high bar. What case goes first. Yeah, to me, it seems like Bragg is imminent. I know, the imminent word is like an eye roll now and MSNBC at this point, all signs point to that. I think the only thing that would prevent a Brag from Big first is if he steps off the ledge and just you know, or the grand jury. You know, something happens in the final days with the grand jury. So I think Brag is the most likely. And to me, it seems like Jack Smith.

It seems like the federal stuff is moving very fast. And then I think that the federal investigation, um, they're conscious of the timeline, right like the debate start in August, right, These guys don't want to be doing indictments in August, right like after the campaign has really right, But they themselves, I think, feel like there's some imaginary date in their minds. Maybe it's the first debate, maybe it's after you know, certain number people announce or whatever, where it's like the

campaign is on right now, like we can't interfere. So I think that the federal stuff would happen next. And then I don't have as much insight into what's happening in Georgia. But that seems very live too. There's a lot that there's a lot of live grenades out there. So anyway, that's my half prediction is that bragg is going to happen first, just not as quickly as we thought. Tim Miller, thank you, Thank you. I'm JF. Justin Wolfers is a professor at the University of Michigan and the

host of the podcast Think Like an Economist. Welcome to Fast Politics, Justin and Fast Economics, Molly. So, I can't decide whether to start with the raid hike or the bank runs, So I'm going to let you choose. Yes, let's get bank runs and just explain a little bit about what happened with these bank runs and what they meet in Yeah. So, if anyone has seen the movie

It's a Wonderful Life. Yes, what happens is someone in town thinks that the bank may not have enough money in its vault, so then they run to the bank, and then other people along the way also think, oh no, there might not be enough money in the vault, so

they also run. And so now there are a whole lot of people inside the bank trying to withdraw their money, and there's more people than there is money in the vault, and so a bank run is the self fulfilling prophecy when everyone fears there won't be money in the vault, so they all want to get to the bank and we draw their money before someone else takes the last dollar, and then you end up with no money in the vault.

That was what happened in a wonderful life. That's what happened throughout the Great Depression, and that is what happened to Silicon Valley Bank. There's an interesting caveat which is wealthy venture capitalists were involved in this bank run, so a particularly unsympathetic bunch of characters. The way a bank run goes down is actually kind of everyone's a little selfish, right, You're like, I hear the banks in trouble. You could pull the manager enough he support, but you can raise

there to beat your neighbor. And if you really want to think of who's most likely to exhibit that sort of behavior, pet Teal's pretty high on my list. Supposedly though, and I want to I want to ask you about this. Supposedly he did not. He is saying, at least he said to some journalists that he had fifty million in that bank, and he did not pull his money out. That said Founder's fund, which is a fund that he has some affiliation with, UM did pull its money out.

And pet Teal has a long history of always telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth. Well, my favorite is David Sachs. Who can you who's a venture capital? I mean, I don't, I can't tell. Can we say, like this is just like a gallery of pricks? Can we say? David Sacks is a entrepreneur who is a middle aged guy who went to Stanford and blocked me on Twitter. He was another spreneur involved in this.

But you know what I think is pretty interesting about all of these libertarians is that the minute Silicon Valley Bank was in trouble, they weren't crying not to their own bootstraps, but to the federal government because of a much broader and much harder truth, which is that even if you're the most fervent believer in market forces, while we're on markets require regulation. And nowhere is that more clearly the case than we're thinking about the banks making system.

Banks have what economists call multiple equilibria, And I'm going to explain that Molly before you never invite me back. Yes, go basically most days of the week, probably in January twenty third last year, you woke up and you thought, to yourself, finance is so boring. I promise not to think about it all day. And that's an equilibrium because if everyone does that, we'll just leave our money in

the bank and the next day's boring. What happened at the end of last week was a bunch of people woke up and they said, I'm worried them may not be enough money in the vault. And it may not even be I'm worried. It could be molly that I'm worried that you're worried. Now, if I'm worried that you're worried there's not enough money in the vault, I'm worried you're going to go withdraw your money and then there'll be no money in the vault. And so what I

do is I run. And that's the other equilibrium, the other outcome. And so the thing is banks can flip from the good boring state to the oh my god, I've got to beat you their state just overnight. Click your fingers, just like that. It turns out remarkable fact here the economics to solve the problem of bank runs

solved it, totally solved it. So if you look at the number of bank runs that occurred in the US, they're incredibly common all the way through the eighteen hundreds, the nineteen hundreds up until the Great Depression, or an enormous number of bank runs destroyed the financial system, and in the wake of the Great Depression were instituted what's called deposit insurance. Deposit insurance says well, if your bank goes bast we will pay you back, We'll give you

the money. And so what that means, Molly is let's go back to January twenty third. Remember that was a morning you work up and you thought finances so boring. I promised not to think about it. If you have less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars every day, is that boring? Right? And if you think the day is boring, then I don't need to run to the bank to withdraw my money before you do, because I know that you think it's boring. So deposit insurance solved

the problem. You might well, but justin there was a bank run. The thing about Silicon Valley Bank is all of its depositors were not all A huge number of its depositors were VC and startups. The thing about those folks is they have gobs of money, heaps of it piles. You're only inshored up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So what that meant was all the folks you mentioned before,

they're effectively uninsured. And so what that meant is that bank, and that bank alone effectively was outside the framework that has prevented bank runs from being a major feature of American life ever since the Great Depression. But what happened was that the Biden administration actually did what the Silk and Valley people wanted them to do, which was to guarantee over a two hundred and fifty thousand Yeah, so

let's go back to David Sachs and his brethren. So when a bank run happens one bank, that took a lot of bets, and maybe you should have known better than to put your money there. If you're a super smart Silicon Valley millionaire, when one bank goes south, you know, like that's bad for you. And I just want to be clear about the stakes here, by the way, which is there's probably enough value in the organization that David Sacks was going to get ninety cents out of every

dollar that he'd deposited. So this was not like losing all your money anyway. It was like losing a tenth of all your money. By Monday morning, you would have got half of it, and within a few weeks you would have got I'm guessing ninety percent or even one hundred percent of money back. There's educated guesses. So when your bank's going south, you don't want anyone else to know about it, because that will actually cause it to

go south. As soon as your banks collapse, though, what you want to do is create fear elsewhere, which is what David Sachs did. These guys, libertarian heroes went to Twitter and started screaming the banking systems collapsing. Washington has to do something now. And that's because it wanted you and I to believe that our bank might collapse. And in fact, if they succeeded, that would have been enough for my bank to collapse. If enough people were fearful,

they would have withdrawn their money. We would have had another old fashioned bankrupt and at that point that's called contagion. And the federal government has to do something to stop this spreading to a million other banks. So that's why these guys incredible misbehavior are screaming the whole systems going down, despite the fact that they knew they were going to

get at least ninety percent of their money back. And it's because they wanted to create the macroeconomic conditions that would give the government no choice but to rescue them. And it created not just the economic conditions, but also the political conditions, and so the government effectively said, hey, you know what, remember that part where he said everyone's insured for the first two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just kidding, everyone's insured for everything, which would be like

totally awesome if it applied to the rest of our lives. Well, it's good to see libertarians getting away with it because, i mean, you know, good for them. Now, these people are not going to see any it's just hard warming. I mean, none of what they did was illegal. No one was going to go to jail for this. This is just another day of fun in manipulating markets. Right. Yeah, But let's not minimize that, Molly. Let's call bad behavior

bad behavior. Let's call trying to cause economic destruction terrible. Let's call trying to drag down the financial system in order to get your bailout deplorable. May not be illegal, yeah, but it is morally reprehensible, though I'm not sure morally reprehensible is something that these guys consider to be a bad thing. We lost like two of these regional banks. I mean, do you think the rest of the banks are safe? Number one? It seems like his time has passed.

We're getting a sense that they are. Let's pose there. Yes, And the reason he is Silicon Valley Bank was unusual in two respects. One, it was essentially uninsured because it had all rich customers. Two, what management did is they went off to the casino and laid some big bets and banking one I one is you don't do that? And the other thing I want to ask you is it seems to me, like with the railroads, that this would be a case for a regulation would have prevented Certainly,

you know regulation would have prevented this. I mean, will there be regulation? And do you believe that? So there are a variety of different responses, all of which I believe so a different answer. I don't know how you feel about this is maybe we should have insured all deposits to start with, because if everyone's deposits, even billionaires, were insured, then none of them have will start a bank run because they all know that their money will be there whether they go on with draw it or not.

So that's one possibility. It's a form of regulation. Another answer is maybe we should be pretty comfortable with where we're at, which is we ensure most deposits, just not the super rich. But we shouldn't allow banks to only cater to those who are uninsured, as Silicon Valley Bank did. Another answer is what Silicon Valley Bank did was the double whammy of being uninsured and then taking the money to the casino. Why was it allowed to take it

to the casino? And I should be clear to your listeners what it actually did was brought long term government bonds, which sounds like it's safe government bonds. That sounds safe, but long term government bonds is effectively betting that interest rates will be low forever, and so it took a bet I call that going to the casino. So it used to be that banks of Silicon Valley Bank's size were subject to closer supervision by the authorities to make

sure they don't go to the casino. And then in twenty eighteen, Silicon Valley Bank and other small and regional banks went to Washington, looked the authorities in the eye and said, we are not systemically important. You don't need to worry about us. We shouldn't be regulated like this. Just you know, if we screw up, let us fail and it won't have a big problem. They succeeded, and so the regulations were weakened. That helped allow them to

go to the casino. And then of course they go to the casino, they lose all their money, and then they say, just kidding, federal government, we're really important. If you don't say if us, she'll bring the economy down. And they ended up getting pailed out. Just amazing stuff. So talk to me about the rate hikes. Inflation has not gone away, or at least the anxiety inflation has

not gone away. So if you're used to thinking about inflation over recent months as being say six or seven or eight percent, I've got really good news for you. It's probably closer to four four points something. It may be coming down, but it may not be because the recent news hasn't been as exciting or positive as we might have hoped. And so that then means the Fed's got to do something to bring down inflation. And what

it normally does as it raises interest rates. And before this financial mess, it had suggested it might even raise interest rates by half a percent today, and today it decided to go for the simple no surprises approach and raised interest rates by about a quarter of a percent. And it's very hard to fault its logic here. I think there are some who are going to be concerned that, wow, maybe they shouldn't have raised interest rates at all given

the distress in the banking system. But what you heard from Chairman Powell was actually a fair bit of confidence that, you know what, those guys at Silicon Valley Bank were a bunch of Wacker hurdles and we don't think other banks look like that, and we don't think that they're that important to their broader economy. And in any case, the way we fix those problems is what we do is we lend money to banks who don't have enough

in the vault. So we have a solution. So we use lending money to banks providing liquidity is the tool for solving financial distress and then we go back to using good old fashioned interest rates to glob or inflation. And that seems to be what Powell is trying to do. Like, if you were power, would you do this? I were power, there'd be a lot more listeners to your podcast. They

may not be the listeners you want. I think it's a very sensible, very defensible, straight down the middle of the line, straight down the middle of the road view. I think if one we're looking for a liberal critique, it's the one that Elizabeth Warren has correctly raised, which is when we raise interest rates to reduce inflation, what we're doing is we are saying we are going to throw some people out of work, sacrifice them on the

altar of lower inflation. And once you start to think about those people, you start to think, well, maybe we should really be sure we need to do it. And so that would be like, I really don't want to believe inflation. Is this stubborn, But I'm really going to wait until they learn that rather than accidentally overdoing it. That would be I think the liberal critique, and I think it's quite serious. The conservative critique would be if

you sit back and let inflation take hold. Everyone's just going to get used to it, and then inflation becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where I ask for higher wages because my customer living rose, and then my employer raises its prices because it's wage bill rose. Unfortunately, we're not in that position, and so I do think that you know, there are a range of arguments, but it's a pretty

defensible view. Now Here. We are in this kind of period where there's a lot of anxiety that we're headed towards a recession, but really no one knows, right, No one ever knows. Economists are fantastic at predicting recessions approximately two to three months after they begin. What are the indicators you're looking at and what are they telling you? So I'm an optimist. Now, I want to be clear, I'm not promising your listeners there will be no recession.

In fact, I think the simplest way of thinking about it is, over the past century, there's been fourteen recessions. So that says in any given year, there's a one in seven chance or a recession. And then so I reckon, why not think about that this year? Now, A lot of people are a lot more pessimistic than I am. They're like interest rates are high, so therefore we might think it's more likely maybe, but you know, they're not

that high. And I is a very simple rule of thumb, the very the single best indicator for the future path of the economy is how's it going now? It tends to repeat itself, and things are pretty good right now. Unemployment is at a fifty year may have been a tick higher this month. The rate of job growth over recent months has been at a level that in normal times would be called a boom. Yet for some reason,

the headlines are being recession. So I think there is an enormous disjunction between the extraordinary pessimism I hear out there in the actual heart economic numbers, which so far I keep being amazed. But so far just keep looking really really good, and let's just keep hoping it continues. Yeah, I mean, look, you know what else, or what are the other choices? What are the things that you're like

a little bit worried about in your head. The FEDS put out its latest forecast today, and one reason I pay a lot of attention to that is the FED as an institution is literally hundreds of PhD economists who spend their whole day just noodling over numbers, and as far as we can tell, they're the single best predictor of the state of the future of the economy. Really does see the economy slowing over next year. Now, I want to be clear, they're also not infallible, so that

gives me real concern. I worry about the rest of the world. What's going you know. I think there are a lot of things that could go wrong there. I think the biggest, dumbest, stupidest thing that could happen is that the federal government will decide to default on the debt as a result of debt ceiling brinksmanship within Congress. And I think this is a wildly dysfunctional Congress, and simply refusing to pay your bills is just punching the

American economy in the face. And given that the right wing of the Republican Party already like punching Kevin McCarthy in the face, I think they like regular Americans even less. So I worry a lot about that. Yeah, I mean too, Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back. The great pleasure mane. Charlie Savage is a Washington correspondent at The New York Times. Welcome to you Fast Politics, Charlie. Thanks for having me up. Delighted to

have you so super interesting moment in American media. Donald Trump told us he was going to be arrested on Tuesday. It is now Thursday, and nothing true. We of course something, which is that Alvin Bragm, Manhattan District Attorney, is continuing to work with a grand jury in New York and seems to be close to a final decision to seek

an indictment. But Trump obviously had no actual knowledge that he was going to be arrested on Tuesday or this would be done on Tuesday, but was throwing out a specific day as sort of a call to arms to his supporters, which is now come and gone. That doesn't mean nothing is happening, though, It just means that Tuesday was made up. So explain to us a little bit, because what so I wanted you to talk about this

piece that you just did. Possible Trump indictment puts attention on execution for real discretion, because we're in a situation where there are so many possible cases for this defendant that the question we've hit a moment of like who goes first? Right, there is a sequencing issue, not that anyone has the authority to tell one prosecutor versus another in New York or Georgia or Washington, DC. You have to wait for this unrelated other matter to go first.

They're all kind of independent agents here, which is a little bit chaotic where you have seen a lot of commentary of people who are critical of Trump and Drew Saint that he committed various crimes and should be held accountable for that. So people that elk nevertheless wringing their hands over the prospect that this case will go first.

Is this the first case to break that seal? And for the first time in American history, an ex president is being charged with a crime, This ex president in particular, being charged with a crime when the matter at hand, apparently bookkeeping fraud to cover up a campaign europe payment to a porn star, is obviously so much less significant than the events surrounding January six and attempts to overturn the election, or even holding on to classified documents and

obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them the other matters at hand, not just because the actions seem to be tawdry, as they are less important than those other things, but also because there is a sense that the legal theory the album Brag the Manhattan da is considering may itself be novel in some way. And the problem is we don't really know what his theory of the case is, and there's been a lot of speculation, but that speculation

may be raw. But the issue is that we're pretty confident that he's primary charged is bookkeeping fraud for writing and Trump organization records that repayments to Michael Cohen for this payoff to Stormy Daniels were for a legal retainer that didn't exist, as opposed to writing down what they were actually for, which is reimbursing him for this hush money payment during the election. I mean, is that a tax fraud issue or is that a campaign fraud issue? Well,

that's the issue. So bookkeeping fraud in the state law is normally, if it's just by itself, it's a crime, but it's not a big crime. It's a misdemeanor two year statuted limitations. You're not going to you're not going to go after a president on misdemeanor. That's old, But it becomes a felony. The fraud was for the purpose of committing or covering up a second crime. So that's the question. One is the second crime that Bragg is thinking about. There's been chatter that it may be a

campaign finance violation. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to violating campaign finance law by making this payment and not disclosing it. But that's a federal charge. Presidential campaigns are regulated by federal laws. Or raises the question of whether a state prosecutor who doesn't have jurisdiction over federal law can invoke that. Is there some way of making it a state campaign law and so people are nervous

about doing something that hadn't been done before. It may also be the case that everyone is wrong, and Bragg has some other set of evidence it's not public, that perhaps Trump intended to for I'm just making this up now, right, Perhaps he has evidence that Trump intended to deduct those payments to go in right state, to take a tax right off on his payment to a sexual partner. YEA, By the way, I would not put it past him.

But I want to ask you, and I want to go back to something we were talking about a minute ago, which is you said that there is sort of confidence that Brag is still meeting about this indictment. Can you explain to me where that comes from. Well, the DA's office is locked down, but the people who are called for the grand jury to testify are allowed to talk

about what they were asked. Lawyers for people who are being given a chance to try to head off an indictment or the defendant potential defendant itself are free to

talk about it. And so in these investigations, even without there necessarily being inappropriate leaks from a prosecutor's office, especially if it's high profile enough, the high mind of the press corps is generally able to suss out puzzle pieces that give us an idea of what's going on and whether the grand jury is being used for this purpose on this day or being asked to ask some unrelated case.

It looks like this is not going to be resolved this week, and so it continues, and in the meantime then people there's the void is filled by this commentary. Is this the case to go first? Is this the weakest case relative to the others, at least is Bragg it's going to be vulnerable here to attacks from Trump in his world that he's doing something that's never been done before selectively for political reasons. And so that that

discussing into those issues of prosecutorial discression. What is selective prosecution? What would Trump have to show if you did get charged and brought that was the purpose of that piece you brought up. I guess that group is meeting today, but not about this. Can you explain that, Well, a grand jury is not convened generally for one particular investigation.

The grand jury might have several unrelated batters. And so there are reports out of New York that the grand jury is not focused on this case today, in which case, assuming that it's correct, they're you know, they're not going to make a decision today, of course that you know, maybe this is wrong. And by three pm the world looks very different. But there's a whole lot of like looking at this through a glass darkly for all of

us on the outside. Right, there's this case, there's a possible DOJ case, right, we don't really know if that where that is right? Two possible federal cases, both of which are being handled by the Special Council of Jack Smith, one about Trump's attempts to overturn the election leading up to encompassing the events of January six and the other about the classified documents at Marlago and obstructing the efforts

to get them back. And then there's Georgia. Yes, And then the local prosecutor in Atlanta Fulton County in Georgia has a January sixth investigation of her own going focused on Trump's attempts to overturn Biden's narrow win in Georgia, specifically including the famous taped and leaked phone call to the Secretary of State which Trump asked him to quote find the ten thousand or so votes he needed to flip the outcome, and efforts to get Trump supporters to

declare themselves to be electoral voters electoral college voters, which would then set up Mike Pence to not certify the election. Isn't there another Georgia case? There's another phone collumns. Sorry, there's a phone call that we didn't really know about. There are multiple phone calls in Georgia, multiple efforts to get people in to pressure Georgia officials to find a

way to flip the outcome of that election. And so the Fannie Willis, the DA down there is looking at both that on election crimes related to that and the fake electors piece, and she has indicated that she's also looking at a racketeering tis an interesting twist. Racketeering charges were written to deal with criminal organizations like the mafia gangs, where you had groups of people working together committing a

series of crimes, but all with a common purpose. And so she seems to be toying with the notion that Trump and his associates were together committing various crimes, all with the unified purpose of trying to flip that election, and that potentially could violate RICO, the racketeering one. Until she puts together her a grand jury, there will be no charges out of Georgia and there is no grand jury yet. So yes, people may have heard that there was a grand jury, and famously the chairwoman of that

went on this somewhat crazy publicity tour giving interviews. Yeah, not necessarily coming off as the most serious looking person. But that was a special grand jury that was merely it's this thing that doesn't exist in federal law. It was merely to gather evidence. That is to be the body that oversees people testifying and turning over documents. But we're a longer term investigation. It lacks the authority to decide whether to actually bring charge. It will make recommendations.

So Fannie Will still needs to decide whether she wants to ask a regular grand jury does this pile of testimony and documents add up to chargeable offenses? And as far as we know, she hadn't decided whether or not she's going to do that at this point. So there definitely are steps in the Georgia case that would need to happen before anything happened. Well, and in the New York case and in the recent case. Trump has not been charged, No grand jury has voted to invite him anywhere,

but all kinds of things are boiling. Do you think that Trump? And again, I know how annoying it is to come on this podcast and for me to ask opinion questions because you're a straight journalist, but I'm going to ask you an opinion question, but at least it's not partisan. Since Saturday, we have sort of lived this news cycle that was a little bit of Trump's making, right, even if there were absolutely do you think Trump sort

of won that news cycle? I mean, well, He certainly focused attention on this, and he put his rival RHNDA scantists on the hot seat, sort of forced him to show his hand a little bit about whether he was going to be on Trump's side or let Trump stew here. In that sense, he at least was controlling the narrative. He decided, this is what we were on them to

talk about, and we did. An element of this. Which is interesting though, is that part of his commentary since Saturday morning has been a very clear call to arms, helping them to protest. Now was the time protest protest protests, notably not using the word peacefully. Yes, he did once in his notorious January sixth speech, and so then when people later accused him of assitement, his supporters could say, no, he said peacefully, you know, in the middle of all

that other stuff. He finally did, by the way, say peacefully this morning in a true social post that used the word very insidiously. Right. He didn't say, go protest peacefully. He said, you know, I'm in a said Bragg's out of control. He's an animal. They're destroying our country, and they tell us to be peaceful, you know, right, kind of the opposite of urging people to be peaceful. Right, So, but what I was getting at is the protest that he called for have not seen much of a response.

There's been a few sort of halfhearted gatherings of small numbers of people that are generally outnumbered by the number of media who showed up to see what was going to happen. And so maybe some of that is just no one really knows when the day is, If he's actually in the courthouse, maybe you know, being fingerprinted, maybe people will spontaneously flow there. But it's raising the prospect that January sixth was a one off and that his

supporters aren't willing to do that again. All kinds of you know, people rotting in jail and having to pay for their own bills. And also this you know that was about obviously it was a lie, but the election was stolen. Your vote was taken away from you, and maybe that's more galvanizing than hey, they're trying to charge me with their crime over this payoff to a porn star, which lacks that sort of your vote was element. But in any case, we'll see what is he still able

to create or not, you know, to be exciting. He may have revealed himself to not be able to reassemble. Well, I don't want to predict he hasn't been able to do that. But if he isn't able to reassemble a mob, that maybe people in his own party and such, to me, we consider how deferential they want to be to him. Yeah, I mean that is a certainly very interesting situation where you have members of the Republican Party more willing to

defend him than anyone else. I mean you have to wonder, like we had thought for such a long time that it was the base, but what if it's the party itself that has Stockholm syndrome? Right? I mean you don't have to answer that, because I know you was like a real reporter, I will neither. But so I want to ask you what else are you watching for? Again, we're not going to predict, you know, we taping this on whatever day this is. It will come out on Friday.

We're not going to try to predict what's going to happen. But what else are you watching for in the macro micro level whatever? Just tell me what you're looking at? Right, So I'll say two things. One is the piece that you mentioned earlier about prosectual discretion. Make it at something that becomes important if Trump is charged and then his lawyers file a motion to dismiss on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct or selective prosecution, which certainly his pr statements

are pointing towards. You know, this was politically motivated, and no one a weak case, no one else would be charged with this. Therefore it's improper. As I understand it from having read the cases now and talked to a number of professors who've written in this space. The fact that there's never been a case quite like this before may get Trump some traction in the court of public

opinion and try to portray it this way. He will have tremendous difficulty in an actual court of proving selective prosecution, because what he would need to show is that other people have in New York has to be the same prosecutor's office. Can't just be you know, someone in North

Carolina or whatever. Other people in New York have done this same thing, these same action, and the prosecutor chose not to charge them, and those other people had invoked their First Amendment rights to have different expressed different political views them with me, right, because he has to be an exercise of a constitutional right or some disfavored category of like religion or race, like people are being treated

differently based on one of these things. And so it's just not there are any other examples of New Yorkers falsifying business records to cover up campaign era payoffs to people that are embarrassing, even if they're otherwise lawful. And so if he can't point to other examples, Roman Manhattan DA could have charged someone with this and didn't, he

will not succeed in a selected prosecution case. So that was interesting, very very difficult, and it's apparently has been like a century since even anyone that's succeeded in selected prosecution claim, even though defendants raise it all the time.

So that's what. The other thing that's interesting that going on right now is House Republicans Jim Jordan at all comer have been sort of galanized into action to try to help Trump and have been demanding information, demanding testimony, demanding documents from Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA who this Morning's had his lawyers send them back a letter saying, buzz off this federalism. You have no legitimate purpose in doing this. Even the federal DOJ does not tell you

about open investigations. We're a state court as well, sovereign state of New York Tenth Amendment array of defenses. And it appears to me that it is likely that this is just the beginning and there will be similar attempts by the House DPD to get into the Georgia case, maybe the Jack and the Jack Smith two cases we may be ending up with. Can they get something to

the floor for contempt? If these prosecutors tell them to go away, will we be back in court as we were with The politics flipped one hundred and eighty degrees in the last two years of the Trump administration, when the Democratic controlled House kept keening entities ranging from Trump's former lawyer Don Began, White House Council month Don Agan, to Mazurs, his financial accounting firm, and sort of Trump World. People were arguing, these subpoenas are invalid, These go beyond

Congress is legitimate legislative authority. This is just you know, political fishing expeditions, and therefore, judge, you should quash the subpoena. You know, it used to be exceedingly rare for Congress to be in court pursuing litigation over trying to enforce subpoenas, and that became kind of commonplace in the last two

years of Trump. Fancy stonewalled the Democratic House, and I think that same set of issues is going to be all over the place again now and we're starting to see the leading edge of that, except now it'll be Republican House trying to get its subpoenas enforced. Yeah, ironee yes, yeah, thank you so much. This was so interesting. I really appreciate you. Thanks, Charlie, my plan, sure, Molly jun Fast, Jesse Cannon. It's always fun when the petty little foot.

None of this is funny, fun, ironic fun. I smile with Matt Gates attacks Rod de Santists to defend his boy Donald Trump. That makes me smile, But I'm maybe a little deranged. So the whole idea here that Gates and co. Have decided is that somehow does Santists could

protect Trump by stopping extradition from the state of Florida. Again, Trump has yet to be charged with anything like these people in a rush to defend the guy who hasn't been charged with anything, they're making up a lot of stuff, But The new thing is that Matt Gates wants to santist to stop Trump from getting extradited, which isn't happening. So there's nothing braver than defending someone for something that

you don't understand at all. Congratulations Matt Gates. I think you're just arguing for this because you really want to build that mode. Yes, I want to build the mode. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to your 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.