August 18, 2023 • 53 mins
Legendary Democratic strategist James Carville lays out what Democrats need to do to expand their majority in 2024. Vice’s Greg Walters joins us to talk about Trump's strange choice of a lawyer in his Georgia trial. The Washington Post's Drew Harwell discusses Elon Musk’s X throttling mainstream media outlets to punish them for criticizing him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump is mad at Fox
for using unflattering pictures of him.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We have an interesting show today.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Vice's Greg Walters joins us to talk about Trump's strange
choice of lawyer in his Georgia trial spoiler, he's a
billion dollar lawyer. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post
Drew Harwell about Elon Musk's Twitter x throttling mainstream media
(00:36):
outlets to punish them for not being nice to him.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But first we.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Have legendary democratic strategists. Your friend of mine, the one,
the only, James Carple.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Welcome to Fast Politics. James Carple.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Well, I'm always happy to be on his program. Always
I've been seeing on TV a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
You're doing right, Hey all, thank you. I'm very delighted.
Do you hear it?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You've been doing this for a while. Did you ever
think that you would have a Republican Party with a
front runner with four and it's actually five indictments because
of the superseding.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, one thing to say is, I've been doing politics
for a while in the United States and around the world.
I have no experience suggest this is like unheard of.
What I'm thought of interested in in a short time
is does he show up at the debate or does
he show up and turn himself in at the time
the debate starts. I'm making book or even money that
(01:43):
he announces when his.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Claim is going to land in Atlanta. Now it's gonna
be a modicade there.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
He's going to show up right at the time that
the first question come, and I think he's gonna pull
every stunt you can think of.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
If he does that, does he win the debate because
he sucks all the oxygen out of the room.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, you don't understand Trump's mind, attention is winning. So
by his definition of winning, Yeah, if you just look
at the schedule of arrangements, motion, you name it, the
civil trials, it's kind of hard to see how any
of these guys get very much oxygen, very much attention.
You know, I don't think he's still have that mundigi
(02:22):
where he's got one hundred page manifesto and how the
election is stole in front. But that's up there with
Mexico paying for the wall and infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, it's a kind of baffling fiasco, right, like think
you think about if you're a Republican donor, I mean,
what do you you're freaking.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Out right, Well, he's fucking up all of the money
to pay legal fees, so I hit a lot of Republicans,
like professional Republicans. He's taking money away. He doesn't give
any money back to the campaign. They're all to his
lawyers in himself. He's cleaning up what the citate candidates
are having trouble raising money because he's taken at all,
(03:00):
and none of it is going to help them withn't
and I don't know how to that changed it very much.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
He doesn't care about the Republican Party.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
In fact, I think I think he actually paints it
the Republican Party, and he likes me dominating it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And you know, to him, cruelty is the point.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And he still be as cruel to them as a
conmedian now and now, Rudy, according to court files, times
he got the money, he can comply with the feeders anymore.
How much money Rudy Giuliani has made in this century,
you have no a lot earthy idea of how much
money he made, speaking until he Brew himself up, and
(03:40):
how much is Guliane Partners made Giuliani Law firm, and
they had every shakedown. Then you can think of it's
all gone, all right, the man's gonna die in jail.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Do you think Rudy is going to die in jail?
You're not the first person who has told.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Me those, by the way, hard to think of how
he doesn't I mean, but actually doesn't you know?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Off themselves with this Weeko statute.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
There's a sort of part of the legal game here
is to try to get the littler fish to flip
on the bigger fish.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Do you see that happening?
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
If there's nineteen indicted under the rid Cose acta Georgia.
So I'm a gamble, so you know what the over
under is?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Okay? So down on. If there's a.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Football game and you say the over under is fifty,
that means that the total number point. If you take
the under, that means that the score ends up twenty
five to twenty four, The underwins because that's forty nine
total points. If it ends up twenty six and twenty five,
you win because that's fifty one total point. So what's
the over under of the nineteen. How many plead before trial?
(04:44):
So what do you because you feel pretty sure that
some of them are in. They had to get leverage
to get them to bleed. So is it the twelve
ats you go to til or fourteen actually go to trial.
I don't know, but it's just something to think about,
and they're going to try. I've seen a lot of commentary.
The friend of mine worked for the DA in Fococato,
(05:06):
was a very high level guy. I think his wife
still works there. And the people got to realize that
Atlanta School's case that Friandi Will was one ran and won,
was the most complex criminal trial in the history of
the United States, and they tried all of them together.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And which got a lot of the chatter ari going is.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
A Ruth Marcus column who basically wrote a column saying,
I don't think the Atlanta people capable of handling this.
It's too complicated. They should just turn it over to Jacksmith.
I think miss Marcus under estimates to competence at that
office or actually simple the RICO status, but I don't
know that. But that's a talking point is should they
(05:49):
wait and defer to defense? And there's also significant there's
a chance. Walg Metal has already fouled to have the
case removes from state court to court. Why is this important?
First of all, jurypool goes from Fulham County to the
Northern District of Georgia, which would be considerably more favorable
(06:09):
jury pool to Trump than because it would be less democratic,
if you will. But the big reason is is that Georgia.
If he's tried in Georgia, it's on TV. Tried in
the Northern District. In federal court, it's not on TV.
And this is a motion that had some chance to
be granted, and there's actual stashed out. There is a
(06:31):
big argument as to why it shouldn't be granted. And
you know, but you got a lot of Trump appointed
judges in that Northern District of Georgia go decide that case.
The Eleventh District is heavily you know, can Republican appointed judges?
So I don't know, but that's going to be a bet.
That's a big deal. That's a big deal is the
removal from state to federal court.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
But the larger.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Issue here, it seems to me, is that Trump World
is trying to try this case in the media.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Yeah, yeah, is that smart?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I mean, he's the only.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Thing he can do.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
To ask him not to seek out all the press
in publicity again is like asking a shock Well, I
mean that's what he does. And in his mind this
has never failed him. He's never been convicted of anything,
he's been sued thirty five hundred times, never admit anything,
and he gets publicity, he wins a nomination. He actually
(07:25):
won the presidency one time, and he's not going to
change his way of operating or his political strategy on Iota.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
You can't do it. You're just in gave up on it.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So if you were a Maga Republican strategist, would you
thank god they're not What would.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
You do right now?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
He seems like he's going to be the nominee. He
can't possibly he's not growing the electorate. I mean, what
are the choices here?
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well, if I'm a Maga Republican, I keep doubling down.
But what we have to understand, what the press has
to understand be out it's with you. I'm getting fricking
irritated at interviewing people at the Iowa State there right,
who do quote I do my own research unquote, They
(08:11):
need to interview Republican politicians, What will you do if
he's convicted? Do you think that this is motivated at
these serious charge what do you ask? Quit asking these
goddamn people in a diner what they think and start
making these Republican politicians that can't say what they really think.
I wish that son of a bitch would catch to
(08:33):
clap and die. All right, that's what they think, right.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Well, we've seen reporting where Republicans have said we're depending
on the actuarial tables, which was a way of them
saying they had hoped he would But that's an insane
thing to hope for your front runner.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
When you can't an advice like that, you got to
hope with some weirdship because they're forty percent of that party,
and the problem is they knock him off, they're going
to have no enthusiastics.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
DeSantis was ultimately proof that trump Ism doesn't scale.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yeah, you know, Mollie, I think that a lot of
us just missed what a poor candidate, the census less,
and I think we are kind of willing to cut
him slack because everybody and I put myself and I thought,
well this guy, you know, it's one about twenty points
re election Florida. He seems to have something going for him,
(09:27):
you know, and he says, well, he's Trump, but a
competent in less splashy version, et cetera, et cetera. And
he's turned out to be not a mediocre candidate, a
really bad candidate. And again talked about this on the
show before Susie Wiles. She keeps sticking pins in that
Dessantra's No, I can tell you how you turn around.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
He's getting off a bad story, you know, all this
dol News attorney don't.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
I can't wait to read the Desanta's campaign book and
I can't law and have mercy better have five chapels.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
I'm actually more interested in her. And again it's.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Just as a how does somebody go from the color
person of the golf channel to the dominant person in
a one hundred million dollar presidential campaign on a pretty
interesting story.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Do you think there's a chance at any of these
other candidates, Like, is there a place for a Tim
Scott to come out or is there a I mean,
I think Nikki Haley clearly, Oh.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Tim Scott, this is my favorite.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
If you talk to like your friends who were publican
friends that you know they can't stand Trump, but they
hate Democrats and they're just hoping that somebody will come
along and it it can actually be for And it's
always that you listen to one of them, be it
interviewed well. I mentioned Tim Scott. He's got that kind
of Reagan Sonny optimism of the body, and you know
(10:53):
he'll be so prop piece of legislation is hit right.
I want to hope a president. I want to have
a beer. I want a guy that can relate to me.
I want somebody that knows the goddamn price of a
dozen eggs a quarter milk.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
God that preaches celebraty. Can you really identify with him?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Is that what Tim Scott does?
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yes? No, yes, he.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah. That may not be a winner.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
My experience in Americana is it's not a winning issue
out there.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
You know what.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Iut Egan too graphic about it. It seems a little
bit weird, honest with you. He talks about the virtues
of celebracy.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, it may not be the winner.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
It may not be the regular guy. You know, you guy,
you know what we're looking for.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
It's been a remarkably the legislative record is kind of vapid,
and ineffective. He's safe, I can be. I'm really looking.
I'm taking a real good look at.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Him, right, I mean, I know Republican donors who are
just desperate for young Kin to jump.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
In, right, you know, and y'all can say, you know,
he's Connors of the sweat of s and he's a
you know, bred governor of a mostly blue state. Just
hard to see them coming out and voting for Glenn Yelkin.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Do you think all of this energy goes to and
no labels goes to trying to get their party candidates
to peel off enough of the vote so that Trump wins.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Remember, now it's not just no labels. He's called Well West. Right,
if you said, well Biden, the Trump people said, well
Bob probably when that I don't have much of earth.
But it's not going to be Biden, b Trump going
to be Biden Trump, no labels, Cornell West and I'm
not sure I'm not more worried about Cornell West.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
And I have no labels?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Can you say more?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
In twenty sixteen, Jill Stein ran as a Green Party candidate.
He got more votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, and
Hillary lost Bot right. She was also funded by the Russians.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
She is now Cornell West's campaign manager.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
In Cornell Jesus Or I said, attractive communicator. No one
even knew who she was or if she said something,
you wouldn't even recognize her voice. Cornell West has been
around forever, you know, to disaffected young people.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
The guy kind of makes sense to him.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And you know, he's Stiller and he's a Black Ivyle
educated guy. He's, you know, got a real left wing
message and you know, calls everybody brother and sister, and
you know, to both parties. I just can see a
disaffected people going to his camp, even more than Joe Stein,
(13:45):
who caused us some unbelievable grief. I mean, same thing
in two thousand. I mean sorry, Ralph Nada won the
presidency majority w Bush given had a chance, and they
gonna do it again. I mean I said, they's a
good chance to do it again. It's a real, real problem.
So it's not going to be two people in the ring.
(14:07):
That that's not that's not it's going to come out.
It's going to be four people at least in the ring.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
So do two seconds for me on the Senate map
right now?
Speaker 3 (14:16):
All right, the city map is it's hard to see.
So we have a one boat fifty one point nine senate.
It's hard to see how we keep West Virginia. I
just really the next most problematical sea is probably Montana, right, Ohio,
I feel better about boast. There was some concern about
(14:39):
Senator Casey and if Dave McCormick ran, he was the
kind of moderate, the kind of Glennykin.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I don't see McCormick honestly is I see him as
a receding threat. Things can go wrong in Nevada, they
can't go wrong in Arizona. Two best opportunities to pick up,
and I think that they're both better than anybody thinks.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that
fifty to fifty or Texas and Florida. I am particularly
(15:07):
high on Florida if we can avoid a primary and
get a good candidate. Said, well, James, we've got be
bad there. In twenty twenty. We had the worst year
you could imagine in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Oh true.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
The first thing the census is numbers are now, and
I think they're dropping by the day. Rick Scott has
never been popular, and he is on the front he's not.
He is the proponent of mostly getting the renaissance puriity
of medicare, raising tactors on hotel maids, and he's never
been popular. The other thing is, I cannot emphasize this enough.
(15:42):
The home insurance rake Florida are a major issue. Most
people don't live with that issue, they're with it like crazy.
So I think Florida is a real opportunity for a pickup.
And I think if Colin Allrod very high to call
and he's able to get through the Democratic nominating primary
(16:05):
process with a pretty united party, I mean Ted Cruz,
They're to be asking Ted Cruz every day about Trump
and his troubles. And there's nobody that's had a more
complicated history with Trump. You know, he called his wife
a hag, he called his daddy. And I told Colin
he played football at Baylor. I said, y'all, I could
(16:26):
remember that old song you can't get out.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Of talk like a man.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I just will you know, Ted Crews taking that little
rollerbag through the air out of jaxas and you know,
having Trump humiliate him and come back and then have
Colin hour to you know, sweat and mud all of
his space for a bail of football, you know, hormone.
But cruises is easy to pick on, so that's what
(16:53):
we're gonna have. Any pick up, you know, then you're
down to Indiana, which is not promising.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
James Carveld, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
I hope you'll come back absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Greg Walders is a reporter advice. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Greg, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
This is a really interesting niche story.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Talk to us about Donald Trump's Georgia lawyer.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Yeah, so what interested me about this piece is that
Trump's lead attorney in Atlanta in the Rico case is
basically arguably the premier hip hop defense attorney in America.
He just has this gold plated roster of hip hop royalty.
(17:52):
We're talking Cardi b Migos, the Baby Walk, a flock
of Flame. Little Baby's also worked with some basketball stars
like Dennis Rodman, Shaquille O'Neil, and he has this really
strong bond with them that when you reach out and
talk to these big name clients, but that's it's a parrot.
(18:13):
They just it's weird. It's almost spiritual. We can talk
about that in a moment. But the other thing that's
really fascinating about him is he's, you know, he's got
very personally progressive politics. So he's not the kind of
attorney you would expect to be defending the Maga god
king in his power of need.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Explain to us about his politics.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
Sure, I mean, he's progressive on some key issues. You know,
he's very pro choice. When the Supreme Court repealed Roe
versus Wade, he overturned Ropas's wad. He jumped in and
said that if anybody were prosecuted in Georgia for an
abortion law, he would defend them free of charge. He
has called Colin Kaepernick the greatest patriot in America for
(19:00):
taking a knee. He is very eloquent on the subject
of race and discrimination in the American justice system and
the need for reform. It's a topic very close to
his heart. He is very sympathetic to immigrants, and he's
been expressly critical of Trump in the past on Twitter,
in tweets that he has not taken down.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I kind of love this guy, I.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Think for scene saying this is important. Let me read
a couple of these tweets please. At one point, Trump
got into a beef with Lebron James, and we don't
have to go over what that was about. But he
tweeted the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University, criticizing Lebron
the founder of a free school for children, Potus pathetic.
Once again, it's not the end of it. That's not
(19:49):
at the end of it. So the other tweet is,
you may remember when Trump fired Bararra. Former SDNYUS attorney
Drew tweeted this the Potus firing as DNY US attorney
pre Berrara is a sign of fear in all caps
that he would aggressively investigate the stench hanging over this post.
(20:10):
This is the same guy who's about to go into
court in Atlanta and be like, my client did nothing wrong,
You're off.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Right, Wow, Why is he representing Trump if he's not?
And I like it seems to me like if we're
looking at Trump lawyers, and I'd love to broaden this
conversation out because Trump is a lot of legal exposure,
and he has a lot of lawyers, right, and he's
got some lawyers who will find themselves in terrible legal trouble,
like a Rudy Giuliani or a Ken cheesebro And.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
You've got to ask yourself if you're joining this illustrious circle,
this Star Wars bar scene of weirdos, you know, why
are you.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Not going to be next?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 5 (20:48):
I mean Drew is now representing Trump in a case
where Trump is his co defendants are also a bunch
of like lawyers who tried to do what he wants.
And I asked you about this. We had we had
a really good conversation about this, and he basically said, look,
if anyone tries to get me to do anything unethical,
I'm off the team.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Right If he's ideologically so opposed, this is just about mane.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
So I don't think it is. Actually, I think it's
a lot more interesting than that. People are freedom of
up their own minds, of course, but Drew would swear
up and down that it's not. Obviously there's a lot
of money involved. It's not like he needs this money, right,
There's a lot of other opportunities for this guy to
go out and earn some money. He takes a very
interesting moral stance on this. If you talk to people
(21:36):
who you know, he comes from his background as having
a very strong regard for public defenders, I believe he
was a public defender. I'm not mistaken. At least one
of his kids is a public defender. He takes a
very strong progressive stance on the value, the public value
(21:59):
of defensive attorneys, and will argue that basically they need
to be about race, gender, religion, and politics. You can
make of this argument what you will, but after talking
to him quite a lot about it, my view is
that it's sincere that he believes it would be unethical
(22:20):
for him to reject a client because of their diverging politics.
And there's no mistake their politics diverge. I mean, this
is a guy who donated to the prosecutor who is
going after Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Right, right, right, So interesting, This is like very unusual
for Trump world.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
I feel like, yeah, one more thing that makes it
unusual for Trump world is, unlike a lot of other
attorneys who have agreed to work for Trump, Drew is
good at his job.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
He's a good lawyer.
Speaker 5 (22:52):
He's doing a lot of things lately that are weird
because he's been sucked into the gravitational pull of Trump world,
and so he's acting more like a Trump lawyer out.
But I tried to find people who would say bad
things about him as a lawyer in Atlanta, and I
couldn't do it. Wow, You call up a lawyer, a
lawyer in Atlanta and ask them about Drew, who like
knows him personally a reputation, and they'll tell you, Oh, yeah,
he's the best guy.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Drum could happen. He's good.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Explain to me what the hell's going on here?
Speaker 5 (23:16):
I think there are a few things going on. I
think one of them is you could argue that he's
like drinking his own kool aid on this question of
the role of a defense attorney. But I think it
comes from a genuine place inside him, Like I think
he really buys it. And I think that in some ways,
like if I'm going to put on my shrinker's hat, right,
(23:37):
like try to reach inside his soul.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Which is what we're always interesting.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Which is like this podcast why not yet?
Speaker 5 (23:44):
Yeah, So I think part of it is that this
is a way of proving, this is his way of
putting his money where his mouth is and say I
really need it. I'll even defend this guy who is
someone who disagrees with him about everything he stands for,
and he himself is on record calling a racist and
saying he should be investigated because of a stench, that
even that guy deserves competent criminal defense, and that he's
(24:08):
gonna and he's not going to refuse to do it.
So I think it's partly about proving that to himself.
I think there's also a part of him that likes
the limelight.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
You know. I think I don't think it's the money,
it's the fae, you know.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
I think there's part of him that that does revel in, like,
you know, stepping inside the aura of some of these
famous people.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
It's excited.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Tell us some of the famous musicians and athletes that
he's represented.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Sure, so you know, we're talking Cardi B, We're talking migos,
We're talking Gucci Mayne. Gucci Maine was actually the guy
who kind of like brought him into this world. He's
known as the hashtag billion dollar lawyer.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So is that because he costs a billion dollars or
because he gets you a billion dollars?
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Neither He doesn't do either of those things.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So why is he called that?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
It's pure hip hop hyperbole.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
At one point, I forget who it was.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
There was some rapper who he like a lot of
the stuff about him is something that just some rappers
said that, like they thought it was funny and they
kind of ran.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
But he went to see some forget who it was.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
It would be a better story if I can remember
which rapper it was, but anyway, right, it was some
rapper I don't know that well. One of his early clients,
he showed up at the case and the guy said, Man,
I'm gonna be fine. I got my billion dollar lawyer
right here. And it just stuck and that was a
billion dollars. He's not worth a billion dollars. I asked
him that explicitly. He does not cost a billion dollars.
No one's getting a billion dollars. There's no dollars involved.
(25:32):
It's just bread.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So so he liked celebrity.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Is some of it too, besides the fact that he
believes in these tenants of law.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think if you kind of put
those two things together, like why not.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right, it's so interesting. But he has donated to Fanny Wellis.
I would love you to talk for a minute a
little bit about Fanny Wellis if you can, because I
feel like is nineteen defendants, it's this enormous case she
has successfully used Rico before. I mean, this is very
(26:05):
different than some of Trump's other legal cases.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
It is, so I should say at the outset, I
have not interviewed Fannie Willis, so most of what I
know about her is by talking to lawyers who have
worked with her come up against her. I have tried interviewer,
but her people have been pretty guarded about that so far.
So I can tell you what I've learned through you know,
ulterior journalistic means she is tough man. She is tough.
(26:31):
She's the daughter of a black panther. She is someone
who you know, was elected to this job in the
same election that Trump is calling fraudulent and started basically
in the beginning of January twenty twenty one. And so
like the phone call, the infamous phone call erupted during
her first week on the job, and she jumped into it,
(26:54):
I think it's important to remember in this context the
sheer audacity of what she's doing. We're talking about a overworked, overstretched, underfunded,
understaffed office, and if you look closely, you can see
that kind of tension bursting at the seams.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
With the early thing that they released online. Right, is
that what you're thinking.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Of yeah, you know, and not just that you've seen
some departures from the office, Like it's not we're not
talking about a juggernaut, right, We're talking about like a
little engine that maybe can right. You know, it's not
hard to see signs of disorganization and dysfunction coming out
of that office.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And what we're talking about is that the office accidentally
posted the charging document before it was ready and then
they took it down and that was a little bit
of an embarrassment.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
That's right, And I think that if you I don't
think that's going to be the last time this happens,
you know, I think And another example in the past
was was the four person of the Special Purpose Grand
Jury that Fawdy Willison paneled to investigate Trump over the
past year, came out and just made a bunch of
just all over.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
The place statements to the press.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
That was that woman who went on all the shows
and seemed kind of nuts.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Yeah, and you know that was not really a good
look for the office, since she was talking about having
ice cream parties with the prosecutors and stuff like that.
So I mean this is you know, you almost have
the feeling of the office like it's just not a
tightly run ship. As I started to say, I think
that they are doing something incredibly ambitious.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Here.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
The other local prosecutor pursuing this is the foremost local
prosecutatorial office in the country, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office,
and they have a much smaller, tightly wound case, about
a few documents here and there. Her case is sprawling,
you know, even compared to Jack Smith's democracy case. Jack
Smith's case is like a haikup. It's just so tight.
(28:57):
One person he's going to get try to get this done,
his book possible. Her case is like the Odyssey. It's
got everything in it. It's epic poetry, and it's all
of the above. It's almost like Jack Smith's case is
the one that might get there before the election, and
then she's got the safety case that can't be pardoned
(29:17):
away by whoever wins the White House next and catches
like all the players.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Do you think that they're going to be capable of
doing this? Are you worried about that? I mean, I
think she has a pretty good track record, doesn't she.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
She does have a track record for getting convictions. I
think she is very dogged, very determined, and very tough.
I would not want her prosecuting me. I do think
that she's got just a colossal task and not the
world's biggest office and staff to handle what they have done.
The dog has caught the ice cream truck here and
(29:52):
now has to figure out what to do. So should
there be concern about whether they can get it done,
I would say yes, we are just in historically totally
uncharted waters here. I think indictment is very impressive. Clearly
they did a massive investigation. Part of the context here
that may not be so apparent to people who aren't
(30:14):
living in Atlanta or following it closely is that. And
one of the reasons she was elected in the first
place is that during the pandemic's Fulton County built up
this massive backlaw of chases. There are people who wait
in the local jail at nine oh one Rice Street,
which is you know famous in local hip hop down
there as kind of both this. It's the jail cell,
(30:37):
and it's where people do their first appearance and where
Trump may appear soon. People go in there for months
without even being charged, before they can even be charged
with a crime, and conditions are notoriously bad. People die
in they're not infrequently. There's just a it's a bad situation,
and so she was kind of elected to clean that up.
(30:58):
And then after she comes into office, she takes over
this huge case and you know, circling back to like
Drew and his support for her, that was where it
came from, right, He thought she was someone who could
try to help clear that up. I mean, she was
seen as relatively the progressive take. She's a progressive guy.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
It makes sense.
Speaker 5 (31:15):
Then came the infamous phone call heard around the world
and the Trump just needs to find eleven, seven hundred
and eighty votes and everything changed.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So interesting. You've written about Rudy Giuliani. We've all written
about Rudy Giuliani. I feel like he's a holdover from
last season. Do you feel like Rudy Giuliani could theoretically
roll on Trump? I mean, does that seem he needs money,
he's in trouble.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I mean, are you seeing that.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
So with the caveat here that the last few years
have been very surprising, so anything can happen. I guess
with that to the side, my reaction is no, I
don't think that's fawsible For a few reasons. I think
One of them is what kind of deal could Rudy get.
What could Rudy tell us about Trump that would be
(32:05):
so vital to the prosecution that he would get his
sentence reduced, you know, from a sentence that is supposed
to be a minimum of five years that's actually probably
over reported a little bit. I think the judges do
have more leeway than that down there. But that's a
lot of time. He's going to be eighty years old
pretty soon, like he's seventy nine. He take any eighty
(32:25):
year old, you know, and tell them they're going to
do two years in the local penitentiary. I mean, that's
you're gambling with a life sentence there. So what amount
of time would he accept versus the possibility of beating it?
You know, I don't know why he would. The second
thing is that if you're the prosecutor, I don't know.
I guess maybe you'd be tempted to score that easy victory.
(32:45):
But so much of what he did was in public,
and he's like the number two guy on the roster.
Argue with late Am or Meadows. When you flip people,
you want them to flip against someone bigger than that, right,
would she want to Flip or Julia with a deal
that would let him not go to prison. I mean,
I don't know. I don't really see the strong urge
(33:07):
to get to a deal with Rudy on either side.
That's just my my hot take that you know. Then again,
as I said, the twenty twenties have been nothing if
not surprising, so maybe I doubt.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
It so interesting. Thank you so much. I hope you'll
come back.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Hey, I'd love to. This is fun.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Hi, it's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
right now, is going to have merch for sale over
at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
You can now buy shirts.
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Hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs.
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We've heard your.
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Cries to spread the word about our podcast and get
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Puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise
only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support.
(34:16):
Drew Harwell is a reporter of covering technology at The
Washington Post.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Drew, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Your beat is Internet media? Is it media?
Speaker 6 (34:27):
Internet, explain discuss I just cover anything on the Internet
that seems interesting at the time. A lot of it
lately has been, you know, Elon Musk taking over the
company formerly known as Twitter. But a lot of it
is just how you know, politics and media on the
Internet intersect. So a lot of it is Trump and
a lot of it is Elon, TikTok, all that sort
(34:49):
of fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
So let's talk about Elon Mosk. Incredible stuff here. You
had a scoop yesterday, the champion free speech. He has
an interesting way of dealing with things he doesn't like.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
Yeah, and if you're using Twitter, sorry X, and you
want to click on a link to a story, you
expect to go immediately through to that other story. That's
how it has always worked. That is how it works
for pretty much every website. Except we started running some
tests yesterday and found that there were a pool of
(35:25):
websites that actually get a five second delay. So when
you click on it, it just goes to gray for
five seconds. It wastes your time for five seconds before
you can actually access the link. Twitter X does that
now or did that yesterday? When we tested for The
New York Times. Reuter's Facebook Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Substack,
(35:50):
and the connective tissue on all of those is all
of those websites have upset Elon Musk to some degree.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
He has gone on a.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
Tirade against you know and the New York Times and
Reuters for doing accurate reporting that has made him look bad.
He's obviously been in this long suffering slap match with
Mark Zuckerbird, who owns you know, Facebook, Instagram and threads,
bluse Guy and substack or our Twitter rivals. So here
(36:19):
what we saw was, you know, Elon Musk appears to
be behind the scenes pushing a button to waste everybody's time,
slow the traffic to all of these properties that he
personally dislikes, and do it in this really secretive way
so people would not even realize what was happening, and
they might click a link and it might go gray
(36:40):
and they might say, Okay, well, I don't want to
go there anyway, and that can have a real impact
on the website because they lose traffic and add revenue.
So it was a very secretive, malicious thing to do.
And we don't have any evidence that this was just
sort of a technical clitch because it only isolated these websites.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I want you to.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Get to the punchline here, which is as soon as
you reported about it.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
M yeah, a couple hours after we reported on it,
the delay magically started to disappear. We could actually see
it in the test. This delay that was stuck at
around five seconds just started going away, and you could
magically get to that website. So very clearly, I mean,
X and Elon never never addressed it in any meaningful way,
but once.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
We can get reported on it.
Speaker 6 (37:27):
No, and Elon actually blocked my emails when I started
asking about it, you know, so this is you know,
from anybody else, it would be almost too petty to believe.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
But this is Elon Musk we're dealing with. This is
this is just kind of his playbook.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Right, No, I mean it is super interesting to me, Like,
I think it's interesting because this kind of thing, there's
always been so much paranoia about Twitter from the left,
first from the right, and now I think from the
left this paranoia may actually be warranted. This story is
proof that they're in there monkeying around, right. So I
(38:01):
wanted to ask you, like it used to be, people
would say, you'll remember the days of old when Twitter
was like a normal company run like a normal company,
people would always say Conservatives would always say, I'm being
shadow banned, I'm being throttled.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Was that happening then?
Speaker 1 (38:18):
And also if it was happening, then is it happening
now in the other way or.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Is there just not enough evidence?
Speaker 6 (38:24):
Yeah, I mean that's the hilarious point of all of this. So,
back before Elon had bought it, Yeah, like you said,
there was the constant griping about shadow banning. Anytime, you know,
someone typically on the right would tweet something that they
felt like didn't get enough likes or retweets, they would say,
oh lord, the shadow banning is happening again.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
The liberals in Silicon Valley are out to get me.
You know.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
There was never really any systemic proof of any of that,
and actually the research ended up finding that conservative viewpoints
on the platform got more attention and they were actually
less suppressed. But that was the reason and why Elon
took it over to begin with. He felt like there
was this massive injustice happening. Now once he's taking it over,
(39:08):
instead of you know, balancing out the force and making
it so there's no shadow banding happening. To anybody we
can actually tell there's legitimate, you know, behind the scenes
algorithmic tinkering happening in the other direction against all of
the So, you know, this just again belies the whole
free speech absolutist claim that Elon Musk has always set
(39:31):
it out himself. And this, you know, these throttlings that
he did yesterday, Like it's hard to even remember all
of the examples he has put together in the last
twelve months of just taking down things he disagrees with.
Of course, he took down the elon jet account that
tracks his private jet. He banned journalists who covered that,
including me and many others for reporting on it. These
(39:55):
are not things that you would expect from like a
First Amendment free speed champion. But this is Elon musk playground.
He has decided that it's his rule and he can
just sort of do whatever he wants. And hey, he
paid forty four billion for it, and he's getting his
money out of it.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I read reporting that said that actually, some of these
autocratic governments like Saudiowabia and Turkey, and I can't exactly
remember who, but the people we don't generally think of
as the good guys, India has an autocrat as a
leader right now. That some of those places, and again
(40:31):
I can't remember exactly what countries, so I don't want
to be wrong here, but that they had actually asked
Elon to throttle some of the content and that he
had gone along with it.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Yeah, that has happened. That you mentioned India, that was
specifically one of the bigger examples. Governments were asking x
slash Twitter to remove specific tweets that they didn't like
from political advocates, dissidents, just people they didn't want on
the platform. And Twitter has never been a perfect company.
It has always been problematic. But before Elon took it over,
(41:06):
it was known for kind of fighting these battles a
little bit, either you know, from a legal standpoint in
court or just you know, the officials in the company
saying no, we have all these rules. Elon has kind
of bent over backwards to placate these governments by removing
this content. And he, you know, when he has been
called out for this, hey, not very free speech, he
(41:28):
has said, well, what are.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
You going to do? You know, we want we.
Speaker 6 (41:32):
Want clients in India. The government's asking us very nicely,
who are we to say. And so you know, again,
it's not just free speech when it's speech you like
or it's easy for you. Elon just sort of has
used the free speech idea as a cudgel really against
the ideas he doesn't seem to like. And then when
(41:54):
a government comes along and asks for that. So, yeah,
it's been a it's been a big frustration. You know,
we see these problems here in America, but we don't
even really know the extent of the problem overseas, where
you know, Twitter remains still pretty influential.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
It's such an interesting bit of projection.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
So basically all of the things that Elon accused old
Twitter of doing, he is now doing at.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
X basically, yeah, and inventing new and surprising ways to
do it right.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
And you know, and we've.
Speaker 6 (42:24):
Seen a couple of weeks ago there was an account,
it's kind of like a far right account, that posted
an image of child sexual abuse. This is the kind
of thing that would never have it allowed on the platform.
That has always been you know, the company has always
had we have zero tolerance. If you post that, we're
(42:44):
reporting it to the authorities. Your band, you're out of
here as well. It should be right for child pornography. Yes,
everyone would expect that, everyone wants that. The industry just
operates like that, and so it was really kind of
you know, even for the people who it's hard to
surprise around Twitter anymore, including me, it was surprising when
Elon allowed this far right influencer to come back on Twitter.
(43:08):
They deleted the post with the image. They basically gave
less than a slap on the wrist. And that far
right influencer has remained on Twitter and is now getting
paid through the ad revenue share. So got like two
thousand dollars from Twitter just for you know, outrage and
engagement that they get on Twitter. So Twitter is cannot
be any more different than it was even a year ago.
(43:31):
Is really just become Elon Musk's a sandbox of whenever
he wants, and he's constantly sort of pushing the boundaries
on what's acceptable and that you know, you see that
and the user base and how people are going away.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That's an incredible bit of sorcery right there. So here
we are Elon is engaged in monetizing the platform, whatever
that looks like. So it seems to me like what
Elon had always wanted was to make it so.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
And I think this.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Is a lot of tech pros were like this. They
sort of thought, like, what does the mainstream media do nothing?
We're going to just recreate it by getting our guys
to sort of make their own media, right, Like that
was sort of the idea.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I mean, we saw him tweet about it.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We saw David Sachs, we saw all of his like
tech pros get very excited about this.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And they were like, this is easy.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Will replace you know, We'll replace a liberal outlet with
the crass and Steen, We'll replace the Wall Street Journal
with Bill Mitchell.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
You know, how hard can it be?
Speaker 1 (44:35):
And that was sort of the monetizing situation too, was
that you know, then you would make more money. You
know whatever has that worked out for them?
Speaker 6 (44:44):
It hasn't and not yet, I mean, and this has
been the challenge for like you said, the whole kind
of right wing internet experiment. And this happened during the
Trump years where they said, you know, after January sixth,
really when some of these websites for being deplatformed, you know,
Parlor disappeared, and you saw the companies go, well, we
(45:05):
have to create our we don't need Amazon anymore.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
We don't need Twitter.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
We'll create truth Social and Rumble, and those websites all
have by and large not been successful. I mean, they
have built niche audiences, but they are not anywhere near
the mainstream networks. And the big problem with those is
there's no libs to own on their right, it's just
(45:29):
all it's all preaching to the choir, and it gets
a little boring. I mean even on the people on
there say, you know, why do I just want to
look at the same memes all day? So Elon, I
guess he thought maybe he could do it differently with
Twitter by sort of taking this a social network that
you know, a lot of the popular influencers on there.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
Were effectively liberals, right.
Speaker 6 (45:50):
You had a lot of celebrities and politicians and comedians
and they you know, they were a journalist and a
lot of people who were just you know, on the side.
He felt like was too woke and too left, and
he felt like, well, I'm just going to come in
and I'm going to make it more central around these
kinds of ideas. And so you saw him elevating people
(46:11):
like libs of TikTok and other sort of anti trans
accounts and the makeup of Twitter started to change really quickly,
and a lot of the technical levers he's been pulling
since then have been kind of in service of that ideal.
I mean, there's a reason why Tucker Carlson has his
show on x now instead of anywhere else and so,
(46:34):
but financial, you know, so culturally, I think he has
been able to shift the vibe of the website, but
financially it's still like a huge loser. I mean, AD revenue,
even as he has admitted AD revenue has plunged.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
A lot of companies just don't want to be selling. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (46:53):
Yeah, that's the way to put Clorox wipes and shoes
next to like a bunch of kooks.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
All right, did the Holocaust really happen? Yeah, so let
me ask you the monetizing. So a lot of people
last month got like ten fifteen thousand dollars. The Crafts
and Steans were the sort of held up as the
liberal example of this. Now you'll remember the Crafts and
Steins really do work in service to Elon, despite maybe
(47:21):
not being far right. They were kicked off Twitter originally
for operating a bond network. So these guys are pretty sketch.
They got money libs of TikTok. A lot of conservative
influencers got money, but did normal people get money.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Nobody offered me any money. I mean, like, let's talk
about that.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:39):
So the elevator pitch was buy Twitter Blue ex blue
for eight dollars a month and you will be rewarded
potentially with this big ad revenue split. All of the
fine print, though, is why it's been so unbalanced. Like,
to get money, you have to have a certain amount
of like views on your tweets or X posts or whatever.
(48:03):
I think it's something like five million a month or something,
and those have to only come from other ex blue subscribers, Right,
So these are other people who have paid eight dollars
a month, yeah, who are yeah, leaning more conservatives. So
you start to read through all the fine prints, and
when we've done the research, it's a vanishingly small crust
(48:24):
of people who are getting the payouts from this. Of course,
when they get the payouts, they go on to X
and say, oh my gosh, I'm rich, and so it
creates this like flywheel. I mean that's what Elon wants,
I assume, is to get everybody feeling like, hey, I
could get paid for this too, but we have not
seen this, you know, reaching down to the normal people.
And to be clear, like you know, the creator economy
(48:45):
of people making money off YouTube and TikTok and Twitch,
it's it's always kind of a one percent economy. Some
people get like fabulously rich and a lot of people
get nothing. But Twitter is just it's become really clear
that just the people, and like you said, with the
craft and scenes, to get money, you really have to farm.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
Engagement in whatever way you can.
Speaker 6 (49:05):
And it's actually kind of made Twitter somehow even more
crass because you can you can almost see people stunting
for hate clicks and retweets and just posting the kind
of crud online that you don't really want to see
but just works to get people clicking because that's what
they need to get, you know, another couple cents on
(49:28):
their Twitter paycheck. And I always want to like remind
people Twitter is not some fabulously money making company and
it never has been. Yeah, so this is all I mean,
they're kind of burning money. Some people have described this
as really kind of desperate, because this is Twitter saying
we're going to give payouts to people to keep using
(49:48):
our product.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
It's like a quasi bribe.
Speaker 6 (49:51):
Obviously, Twitter before this never had to pay people to
be creating content on Twitter, and yet it was still
this cultural juggernaut. So the fact that Elon had to
be handing out checks to accomplish the same just shows
how struggling they are.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
We be banking on X. I personally do not want
to give him.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
I have to say, after my experience with Elon owning Twitter,
I want to neither let him put something in my
brain nor give him my Social Security number.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Discuss Yeah, I mean that's a good question.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
I'm sorry you're not on the opinion side.
Speaker 6 (50:27):
But you can buy an Elon Musk car, you can
get in an Elon Musk rocket, you can go in
an Elon Musk tunnel, Elon Musk, brain chips, flamethrowers. Again,
I'm not an opinion people. A lot of people love
Elon Musk. I mean this has always been the way
I covered Tesla before Twitter. There has always been an
army of Elon Musk stands who you know, see the
(50:49):
iron Man, see the guy who takes no gov says
what he wants. I think that audience has obviously changed
a lot. It's not like just nerdy type anymore. You
see this big sort of maga love fest that's come
to him. But I mean it's it's hurting the other businesses.
You can see the other businesses. They're all getting distracted
(51:09):
by this. I mean people who wanted to buy it
to Tesla. Tesla purchases are down. Twitter usage is down,
so you know, the circus around Elon does have an effect.
Not normies don't always want to be buing into that.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
I mean.
Speaker 6 (51:23):
But then again, you know, Twitter is still still very popular.
It's still beating Threads and Blue Sky and masks On
and all these all these others. But those companies are
are rising, and it's just the start of sort of
Elon Musk's regime.
Speaker 4 (51:36):
So can he you know.
Speaker 6 (51:37):
And this is a guy who has to pay a
billion dollars a year just to pay the debt for
this company.
Speaker 7 (51:41):
So I don't think time is on elon must side.
Oh well, thank you shut threatened me with a good time.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
I hope you'll come back true.
Speaker 4 (51:53):
Yes, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Moment.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast, that Roger stone Man who
doesn't really give a lot of fucks and really always
thinks he's the smartest one in the room.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
Well, I think he got him some trouble.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Well, this is like such a great moment in Roger
stone lore. He is out on bail from his conviction
in the Mueller probe, as Andrew Weissman noted, and he
is already this is like two days after the election
in November. It was before it was called, but it
(52:34):
was a few days after the voting had happened, and
we already really knew the writing on the wall, and
Roger Stone had decided that this was the way they
were going to so doubt. You know what's funny about
all these things is like, if you're going to do crimes,
who is videotaping this are Why is he being videotaped
all the time? Anyway, I just want to say, if
(52:56):
you're going to do crimes, don't do them on video.
That is my I'm not a defense lawyer. I don't
even play one on TV. And yet, if you're gonna
do crimes, don't do them on video.
Speaker 4 (53:07):
You know the wire they said, don't take notes on
a criminal operation because doing video on it would be
even stupider. Yeah, that's what Nicole said today.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
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.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump is mad at Fox
for using unflattering pictures of him.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We have an interesting show today.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Vice's Greg Walters joins us to talk about Trump's strange
choice of lawyer in his Georgia trial spoiler, he's a
billion dollar lawyer. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post
Drew Harwell about Elon Musk's Twitter x throttling mainstream media
(00:36):
outlets to punish them for not being nice to him.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But first we.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Have legendary democratic strategists. Your friend of mine, the one,
the only, James Carple.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Welcome to Fast Politics. James Carple.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Well, I'm always happy to be on his program. Always
I've been seeing on TV a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
You're doing right, Hey all, thank you. I'm very delighted.
Do you hear it?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You've been doing this for a while. Did you ever
think that you would have a Republican Party with a
front runner with four and it's actually five indictments because
of the superseding.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, one thing to say is, I've been doing politics
for a while in the United States and around the world.
I have no experience suggest this is like unheard of.
What I'm thought of interested in in a short time
is does he show up at the debate or does
he show up and turn himself in at the time
the debate starts. I'm making book or even money that
(01:43):
he announces when his.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Claim is going to land in Atlanta. Now it's gonna
be a modicade there.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
He's going to show up right at the time that
the first question come, and I think he's gonna pull
every stunt you can think of.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
If he does that, does he win the debate because
he sucks all the oxygen out of the room.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, you don't understand Trump's mind, attention is winning. So
by his definition of winning, Yeah, if you just look
at the schedule of arrangements, motion, you name it, the
civil trials, it's kind of hard to see how any
of these guys get very much oxygen, very much attention.
You know, I don't think he's still have that mundigi
(02:22):
where he's got one hundred page manifesto and how the
election is stole in front. But that's up there with
Mexico paying for the wall and infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, it's a kind of baffling fiasco, right, like think
you think about if you're a Republican donor, I mean,
what do you you're freaking.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Out right, Well, he's fucking up all of the money
to pay legal fees, so I hit a lot of Republicans,
like professional Republicans. He's taking money away. He doesn't give
any money back to the campaign. They're all to his
lawyers in himself. He's cleaning up what the citate candidates
are having trouble raising money because he's taken at all,
(03:00):
and none of it is going to help them withn't
and I don't know how to that changed it very much.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
He doesn't care about the Republican Party.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
In fact, I think I think he actually paints it
the Republican Party, and he likes me dominating it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And you know, to him, cruelty is the point.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And he still be as cruel to them as a
conmedian now and now, Rudy, according to court files, times
he got the money, he can comply with the feeders anymore.
How much money Rudy Giuliani has made in this century,
you have no a lot earthy idea of how much
money he made, speaking until he Brew himself up, and
(03:40):
how much is Guliane Partners made Giuliani Law firm, and
they had every shakedown. Then you can think of it's
all gone, all right, the man's gonna die in jail.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Do you think Rudy is going to die in jail?
You're not the first person who has told.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Me those, by the way, hard to think of how
he doesn't I mean, but actually doesn't you know?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Off themselves with this Weeko statute.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
There's a sort of part of the legal game here
is to try to get the littler fish to flip
on the bigger fish.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Do you see that happening?
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
If there's nineteen indicted under the rid Cose acta Georgia.
So I'm a gamble, so you know what the over
under is?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Okay? So down on. If there's a.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Football game and you say the over under is fifty,
that means that the total number point. If you take
the under, that means that the score ends up twenty
five to twenty four, The underwins because that's forty nine
total points. If it ends up twenty six and twenty five,
you win because that's fifty one total point. So what's
the over under of the nineteen. How many plead before trial?
(04:44):
So what do you because you feel pretty sure that
some of them are in. They had to get leverage
to get them to bleed. So is it the twelve
ats you go to til or fourteen actually go to trial.
I don't know, but it's just something to think about,
and they're going to try. I've seen a lot of commentary.
The friend of mine worked for the DA in Fococato,
(05:06):
was a very high level guy. I think his wife
still works there. And the people got to realize that
Atlanta School's case that Friandi Will was one ran and won,
was the most complex criminal trial in the history of
the United States, and they tried all of them together.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And which got a lot of the chatter ari going is.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
A Ruth Marcus column who basically wrote a column saying,
I don't think the Atlanta people capable of handling this.
It's too complicated. They should just turn it over to Jacksmith.
I think miss Marcus under estimates to competence at that
office or actually simple the RICO status, but I don't
know that. But that's a talking point is should they
(05:49):
wait and defer to defense? And there's also significant there's
a chance. Walg Metal has already fouled to have the
case removes from state court to court. Why is this important?
First of all, jurypool goes from Fulham County to the
Northern District of Georgia, which would be considerably more favorable
(06:09):
jury pool to Trump than because it would be less democratic,
if you will. But the big reason is is that Georgia.
If he's tried in Georgia, it's on TV. Tried in
the Northern District. In federal court, it's not on TV.
And this is a motion that had some chance to
be granted, and there's actual stashed out. There is a
(06:31):
big argument as to why it shouldn't be granted. And
you know, but you got a lot of Trump appointed
judges in that Northern District of Georgia go decide that case.
The Eleventh District is heavily you know, can Republican appointed judges?
So I don't know, but that's going to be a bet.
That's a big deal. That's a big deal is the
removal from state to federal court.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
But the larger.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Issue here, it seems to me, is that Trump World
is trying to try this case in the media.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Yeah, yeah, is that smart?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I mean, he's the only.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Thing he can do.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
To ask him not to seek out all the press
in publicity again is like asking a shock Well, I
mean that's what he does. And in his mind this
has never failed him. He's never been convicted of anything,
he's been sued thirty five hundred times, never admit anything,
and he gets publicity, he wins a nomination. He actually
(07:25):
won the presidency one time, and he's not going to
change his way of operating or his political strategy on Iota.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
You can't do it. You're just in gave up on it.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So if you were a Maga Republican strategist, would you
thank god they're not What would.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
You do right now?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
He seems like he's going to be the nominee. He
can't possibly he's not growing the electorate. I mean, what
are the choices here?
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well, if I'm a Maga Republican, I keep doubling down.
But what we have to understand, what the press has
to understand be out it's with you. I'm getting fricking
irritated at interviewing people at the Iowa State there right,
who do quote I do my own research unquote, They
(08:11):
need to interview Republican politicians, What will you do if
he's convicted? Do you think that this is motivated at
these serious charge what do you ask? Quit asking these
goddamn people in a diner what they think and start
making these Republican politicians that can't say what they really think.
I wish that son of a bitch would catch to
(08:33):
clap and die. All right, that's what they think, right.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Well, we've seen reporting where Republicans have said we're depending
on the actuarial tables, which was a way of them
saying they had hoped he would But that's an insane
thing to hope for your front runner.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
When you can't an advice like that, you got to
hope with some weirdship because they're forty percent of that party,
and the problem is they knock him off, they're going
to have no enthusiastics.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
DeSantis was ultimately proof that trump Ism doesn't scale.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yeah, you know, Mollie, I think that a lot of
us just missed what a poor candidate, the census less,
and I think we are kind of willing to cut
him slack because everybody and I put myself and I thought,
well this guy, you know, it's one about twenty points
re election Florida. He seems to have something going for him,
(09:27):
you know, and he says, well, he's Trump, but a
competent in less splashy version, et cetera, et cetera. And
he's turned out to be not a mediocre candidate, a
really bad candidate. And again talked about this on the
show before Susie Wiles. She keeps sticking pins in that
Dessantra's No, I can tell you how you turn around.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
He's getting off a bad story, you know, all this
dol News attorney don't.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
I can't wait to read the Desanta's campaign book and
I can't law and have mercy better have five chapels.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
I'm actually more interested in her. And again it's.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Just as a how does somebody go from the color
person of the golf channel to the dominant person in
a one hundred million dollar presidential campaign on a pretty
interesting story.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Do you think there's a chance at any of these
other candidates, Like, is there a place for a Tim
Scott to come out or is there a I mean,
I think Nikki Haley clearly, Oh.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Tim Scott, this is my favorite.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
If you talk to like your friends who were publican
friends that you know they can't stand Trump, but they
hate Democrats and they're just hoping that somebody will come
along and it it can actually be for And it's
always that you listen to one of them, be it
interviewed well. I mentioned Tim Scott. He's got that kind
of Reagan Sonny optimism of the body, and you know
(10:53):
he'll be so prop piece of legislation is hit right.
I want to hope a president. I want to have
a beer. I want a guy that can relate to me.
I want somebody that knows the goddamn price of a
dozen eggs a quarter milk.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
God that preaches celebraty. Can you really identify with him?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Is that what Tim Scott does?
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yes? No, yes, he.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah. That may not be a winner.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
My experience in Americana is it's not a winning issue
out there.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
You know what.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Iut Egan too graphic about it. It seems a little
bit weird, honest with you. He talks about the virtues
of celebracy.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, it may not be the winner.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
It may not be the regular guy. You know, you guy,
you know what we're looking for.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
It's been a remarkably the legislative record is kind of vapid,
and ineffective. He's safe, I can be. I'm really looking.
I'm taking a real good look at.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Him, right, I mean, I know Republican donors who are
just desperate for young Kin to jump.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
In, right, you know, and y'all can say, you know,
he's Connors of the sweat of s and he's a
you know, bred governor of a mostly blue state. Just
hard to see them coming out and voting for Glenn Yelkin.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Do you think all of this energy goes to and
no labels goes to trying to get their party candidates
to peel off enough of the vote so that Trump wins.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Remember, now it's not just no labels. He's called Well West. Right,
if you said, well Biden, the Trump people said, well
Bob probably when that I don't have much of earth.
But it's not going to be Biden, b Trump going
to be Biden Trump, no labels, Cornell West and I'm
not sure I'm not more worried about Cornell West.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
And I have no labels?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Can you say more?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
In twenty sixteen, Jill Stein ran as a Green Party candidate.
He got more votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, and
Hillary lost Bot right. She was also funded by the Russians.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
She is now Cornell West's campaign manager.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
In Cornell Jesus Or I said, attractive communicator. No one
even knew who she was or if she said something,
you wouldn't even recognize her voice. Cornell West has been
around forever, you know, to disaffected young people.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
The guy kind of makes sense to him.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And you know, he's Stiller and he's a Black Ivyle
educated guy. He's, you know, got a real left wing
message and you know, calls everybody brother and sister, and
you know, to both parties. I just can see a
disaffected people going to his camp, even more than Joe Stein,
(13:45):
who caused us some unbelievable grief. I mean, same thing
in two thousand. I mean sorry, Ralph Nada won the
presidency majority w Bush given had a chance, and they
gonna do it again. I mean I said, they's a
good chance to do it again. It's a real, real problem.
So it's not going to be two people in the ring.
(14:07):
That that's not that's not it's going to come out.
It's going to be four people at least in the ring.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
So do two seconds for me on the Senate map
right now?
Speaker 3 (14:16):
All right, the city map is it's hard to see.
So we have a one boat fifty one point nine senate.
It's hard to see how we keep West Virginia. I
just really the next most problematical sea is probably Montana, right, Ohio,
I feel better about boast. There was some concern about
(14:39):
Senator Casey and if Dave McCormick ran, he was the
kind of moderate, the kind of Glennykin.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I don't see McCormick honestly is I see him as
a receding threat. Things can go wrong in Nevada, they
can't go wrong in Arizona. Two best opportunities to pick up,
and I think that they're both better than anybody thinks.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that
fifty to fifty or Texas and Florida. I am particularly
(15:07):
high on Florida if we can avoid a primary and
get a good candidate. Said, well, James, we've got be
bad there. In twenty twenty. We had the worst year
you could imagine in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Oh true.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
The first thing the census is numbers are now, and
I think they're dropping by the day. Rick Scott has
never been popular, and he is on the front he's not.
He is the proponent of mostly getting the renaissance puriity
of medicare, raising tactors on hotel maids, and he's never
been popular. The other thing is, I cannot emphasize this enough.
(15:42):
The home insurance rake Florida are a major issue. Most
people don't live with that issue, they're with it like crazy.
So I think Florida is a real opportunity for a pickup.
And I think if Colin Allrod very high to call
and he's able to get through the Democratic nominating primary
(16:05):
process with a pretty united party, I mean Ted Cruz,
They're to be asking Ted Cruz every day about Trump
and his troubles. And there's nobody that's had a more
complicated history with Trump. You know, he called his wife
a hag, he called his daddy. And I told Colin
he played football at Baylor. I said, y'all, I could
(16:26):
remember that old song you can't get out.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Of talk like a man.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I just will you know, Ted Crews taking that little
rollerbag through the air out of jaxas and you know,
having Trump humiliate him and come back and then have
Colin hour to you know, sweat and mud all of
his space for a bail of football, you know, hormone.
But cruises is easy to pick on, so that's what
(16:53):
we're gonna have. Any pick up, you know, then you're
down to Indiana, which is not promising.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
James Carveld, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
I hope you'll come back absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Greg Walders is a reporter advice. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Greg, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
This is a really interesting niche story.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Talk to us about Donald Trump's Georgia lawyer.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Yeah, so what interested me about this piece is that
Trump's lead attorney in Atlanta in the Rico case is
basically arguably the premier hip hop defense attorney in America.
He just has this gold plated roster of hip hop royalty.
(17:52):
We're talking Cardi b Migos, the Baby Walk, a flock
of Flame. Little Baby's also worked with some basketball stars
like Dennis Rodman, Shaquille O'Neil, and he has this really
strong bond with them that when you reach out and
talk to these big name clients, but that's it's a parrot.
(18:13):
They just it's weird. It's almost spiritual. We can talk
about that in a moment. But the other thing that's
really fascinating about him is he's, you know, he's got
very personally progressive politics. So he's not the kind of
attorney you would expect to be defending the Maga god
king in his power of need.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Explain to us about his politics.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
Sure, I mean, he's progressive on some key issues. You know,
he's very pro choice. When the Supreme Court repealed Roe
versus Wade, he overturned Ropas's wad. He jumped in and
said that if anybody were prosecuted in Georgia for an
abortion law, he would defend them free of charge. He
has called Colin Kaepernick the greatest patriot in America for
(19:00):
taking a knee. He is very eloquent on the subject
of race and discrimination in the American justice system and
the need for reform. It's a topic very close to
his heart. He is very sympathetic to immigrants, and he's
been expressly critical of Trump in the past on Twitter,
in tweets that he has not taken down.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I kind of love this guy, I.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Think for scene saying this is important. Let me read
a couple of these tweets please. At one point, Trump
got into a beef with Lebron James, and we don't
have to go over what that was about. But he
tweeted the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University, criticizing Lebron
the founder of a free school for children, Potus pathetic.
Once again, it's not the end of it. That's not
(19:49):
at the end of it. So the other tweet is,
you may remember when Trump fired Bararra. Former SDNYUS attorney
Drew tweeted this the Potus firing as DNY US attorney
pre Berrara is a sign of fear in all caps
that he would aggressively investigate the stench hanging over this post.
(20:10):
This is the same guy who's about to go into
court in Atlanta and be like, my client did nothing wrong,
You're off.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Right, Wow, Why is he representing Trump if he's not?
And I like it seems to me like if we're
looking at Trump lawyers, and I'd love to broaden this
conversation out because Trump is a lot of legal exposure,
and he has a lot of lawyers, right, and he's
got some lawyers who will find themselves in terrible legal trouble,
like a Rudy Giuliani or a Ken cheesebro And.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
You've got to ask yourself if you're joining this illustrious circle,
this Star Wars bar scene of weirdos, you know, why
are you.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Not going to be next?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 5 (20:48):
I mean Drew is now representing Trump in a case
where Trump is his co defendants are also a bunch
of like lawyers who tried to do what he wants.
And I asked you about this. We had we had
a really good conversation about this, and he basically said, look,
if anyone tries to get me to do anything unethical,
I'm off the team.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Right If he's ideologically so opposed, this is just about mane.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
So I don't think it is. Actually, I think it's
a lot more interesting than that. People are freedom of
up their own minds, of course, but Drew would swear
up and down that it's not. Obviously there's a lot
of money involved. It's not like he needs this money, right,
There's a lot of other opportunities for this guy to
go out and earn some money. He takes a very
interesting moral stance on this. If you talk to people
(21:36):
who you know, he comes from his background as having
a very strong regard for public defenders, I believe he
was a public defender. I'm not mistaken. At least one
of his kids is a public defender. He takes a
very strong progressive stance on the value, the public value
(21:59):
of defensive attorneys, and will argue that basically they need
to be about race, gender, religion, and politics. You can
make of this argument what you will, but after talking
to him quite a lot about it, my view is
that it's sincere that he believes it would be unethical
(22:20):
for him to reject a client because of their diverging politics.
And there's no mistake their politics diverge. I mean, this
is a guy who donated to the prosecutor who is
going after Trump.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Right, right, right, So interesting, This is like very unusual
for Trump world.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
I feel like, yeah, one more thing that makes it
unusual for Trump world is, unlike a lot of other
attorneys who have agreed to work for Trump, Drew is
good at his job.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
He's a good lawyer.
Speaker 5 (22:52):
He's doing a lot of things lately that are weird
because he's been sucked into the gravitational pull of Trump world,
and so he's acting more like a Trump lawyer out.
But I tried to find people who would say bad
things about him as a lawyer in Atlanta, and I
couldn't do it. Wow, You call up a lawyer, a
lawyer in Atlanta and ask them about Drew, who like
knows him personally a reputation, and they'll tell you, Oh, yeah,
he's the best guy.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Drum could happen. He's good.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Explain to me what the hell's going on here?
Speaker 5 (23:16):
I think there are a few things going on. I
think one of them is you could argue that he's
like drinking his own kool aid on this question of
the role of a defense attorney. But I think it
comes from a genuine place inside him, Like I think
he really buys it. And I think that in some ways,
like if I'm going to put on my shrinker's hat, right,
(23:37):
like try to reach inside his soul.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Which is what we're always interesting.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Which is like this podcast why not yet?
Speaker 5 (23:44):
Yeah, So I think part of it is that this
is a way of proving, this is his way of
putting his money where his mouth is and say I
really need it. I'll even defend this guy who is
someone who disagrees with him about everything he stands for,
and he himself is on record calling a racist and
saying he should be investigated because of a stench, that
even that guy deserves competent criminal defense, and that he's
(24:08):
gonna and he's not going to refuse to do it.
So I think it's partly about proving that to himself.
I think there's also a part of him that likes
the limelight.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
You know. I think I don't think it's the money,
it's the fae, you know.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
I think there's part of him that that does revel in, like,
you know, stepping inside the aura of some of these
famous people.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
It's excited.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Tell us some of the famous musicians and athletes that
he's represented.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Sure, so you know, we're talking Cardi B, We're talking migos,
We're talking Gucci Mayne. Gucci Maine was actually the guy
who kind of like brought him into this world. He's
known as the hashtag billion dollar lawyer.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So is that because he costs a billion dollars or
because he gets you a billion dollars?
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Neither He doesn't do either of those things.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So why is he called that?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
It's pure hip hop hyperbole.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
At one point, I forget who it was.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
There was some rapper who he like a lot of
the stuff about him is something that just some rappers
said that, like they thought it was funny and they
kind of ran.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
But he went to see some forget who it was.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
It would be a better story if I can remember
which rapper it was, but anyway, right, it was some
rapper I don't know that well. One of his early clients,
he showed up at the case and the guy said, Man,
I'm gonna be fine. I got my billion dollar lawyer
right here. And it just stuck and that was a
billion dollars. He's not worth a billion dollars. I asked
him that explicitly. He does not cost a billion dollars.
No one's getting a billion dollars. There's no dollars involved.
(25:32):
It's just bread.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So so he liked celebrity.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Is some of it too, besides the fact that he
believes in these tenants of law.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think if you kind of put
those two things together, like why not.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right, it's so interesting. But he has donated to Fanny Wellis.
I would love you to talk for a minute a
little bit about Fanny Wellis if you can, because I
feel like is nineteen defendants, it's this enormous case she
has successfully used Rico before. I mean, this is very
(26:05):
different than some of Trump's other legal cases.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
It is, so I should say at the outset, I
have not interviewed Fannie Willis, so most of what I
know about her is by talking to lawyers who have
worked with her come up against her. I have tried interviewer,
but her people have been pretty guarded about that so far.
So I can tell you what I've learned through you know,
ulterior journalistic means she is tough man. She is tough.
(26:31):
She's the daughter of a black panther. She is someone
who you know, was elected to this job in the
same election that Trump is calling fraudulent and started basically
in the beginning of January twenty twenty one. And so
like the phone call, the infamous phone call erupted during
her first week on the job, and she jumped into it,
(26:54):
I think it's important to remember in this context the
sheer audacity of what she's doing. We're talking about a overworked, overstretched, underfunded,
understaffed office, and if you look closely, you can see
that kind of tension bursting at the seams.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
With the early thing that they released online. Right, is
that what you're thinking.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Of yeah, you know, and not just that you've seen
some departures from the office, Like it's not we're not
talking about a juggernaut, right, We're talking about like a
little engine that maybe can right. You know, it's not
hard to see signs of disorganization and dysfunction coming out
of that office.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And what we're talking about is that the office accidentally
posted the charging document before it was ready and then
they took it down and that was a little bit
of an embarrassment.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
That's right, And I think that if you I don't
think that's going to be the last time this happens,
you know, I think And another example in the past
was was the four person of the Special Purpose Grand
Jury that Fawdy Willison paneled to investigate Trump over the
past year, came out and just made a bunch of
just all over.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
The place statements to the press.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
That was that woman who went on all the shows
and seemed kind of nuts.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Yeah, and you know that was not really a good
look for the office, since she was talking about having
ice cream parties with the prosecutors and stuff like that.
So I mean this is you know, you almost have
the feeling of the office like it's just not a
tightly run ship. As I started to say, I think
that they are doing something incredibly ambitious.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Here.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
The other local prosecutor pursuing this is the foremost local
prosecutatorial office in the country, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office,
and they have a much smaller, tightly wound case, about
a few documents here and there. Her case is sprawling,
you know, even compared to Jack Smith's democracy case. Jack
Smith's case is like a haikup. It's just so tight.
(28:57):
One person he's going to get try to get this done,
his book possible. Her case is like the Odyssey. It's
got everything in it. It's epic poetry, and it's all
of the above. It's almost like Jack Smith's case is
the one that might get there before the election, and
then she's got the safety case that can't be pardoned
(29:17):
away by whoever wins the White House next and catches
like all the players.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Do you think that they're going to be capable of
doing this? Are you worried about that? I mean, I
think she has a pretty good track record, doesn't she.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
She does have a track record for getting convictions. I
think she is very dogged, very determined, and very tough.
I would not want her prosecuting me. I do think
that she's got just a colossal task and not the
world's biggest office and staff to handle what they have done.
The dog has caught the ice cream truck here and
(29:52):
now has to figure out what to do. So should
there be concern about whether they can get it done,
I would say yes, we are just in historically totally
uncharted waters here. I think indictment is very impressive. Clearly
they did a massive investigation. Part of the context here
that may not be so apparent to people who aren't
(30:14):
living in Atlanta or following it closely is that. And
one of the reasons she was elected in the first
place is that during the pandemic's Fulton County built up
this massive backlaw of chases. There are people who wait
in the local jail at nine oh one Rice Street,
which is you know famous in local hip hop down
there as kind of both this. It's the jail cell,
(30:37):
and it's where people do their first appearance and where
Trump may appear soon. People go in there for months
without even being charged, before they can even be charged
with a crime, and conditions are notoriously bad. People die
in they're not infrequently. There's just a it's a bad situation,
and so she was kind of elected to clean that up.
(30:58):
And then after she comes into office, she takes over
this huge case and you know, circling back to like
Drew and his support for her, that was where it
came from, right, He thought she was someone who could
try to help clear that up. I mean, she was
seen as relatively the progressive take. She's a progressive guy.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
It makes sense.
Speaker 5 (31:15):
Then came the infamous phone call heard around the world
and the Trump just needs to find eleven, seven hundred
and eighty votes and everything changed.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So interesting. You've written about Rudy Giuliani. We've all written
about Rudy Giuliani. I feel like he's a holdover from
last season. Do you feel like Rudy Giuliani could theoretically
roll on Trump? I mean, does that seem he needs money,
he's in trouble.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I mean, are you seeing that.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
So with the caveat here that the last few years
have been very surprising, so anything can happen. I guess
with that to the side, my reaction is no, I
don't think that's fawsible For a few reasons. I think
One of them is what kind of deal could Rudy get.
What could Rudy tell us about Trump that would be
(32:05):
so vital to the prosecution that he would get his
sentence reduced, you know, from a sentence that is supposed
to be a minimum of five years that's actually probably
over reported a little bit. I think the judges do
have more leeway than that down there. But that's a
lot of time. He's going to be eighty years old
pretty soon, like he's seventy nine. He take any eighty
(32:25):
year old, you know, and tell them they're going to
do two years in the local penitentiary. I mean, that's
you're gambling with a life sentence there. So what amount
of time would he accept versus the possibility of beating it?
You know, I don't know why he would. The second
thing is that if you're the prosecutor, I don't know.
I guess maybe you'd be tempted to score that easy victory.
(32:45):
But so much of what he did was in public,
and he's like the number two guy on the roster.
Argue with late Am or Meadows. When you flip people,
you want them to flip against someone bigger than that, right,
would she want to Flip or Julia with a deal
that would let him not go to prison. I mean,
I don't know. I don't really see the strong urge
(33:07):
to get to a deal with Rudy on either side.
That's just my my hot take that you know. Then again,
as I said, the twenty twenties have been nothing if
not surprising, so maybe I doubt.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
It so interesting. Thank you so much. I hope you'll
come back.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Hey, I'd love to. This is fun.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Hi, it's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
right now, is going to have merch for sale over
at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
You can now buy shirts.
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Hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs.
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Cries to spread the word about our podcast and get
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Puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise
only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support.
(34:16):
Drew Harwell is a reporter of covering technology at The
Washington Post.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Drew, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Your beat is Internet media? Is it media?
Speaker 6 (34:27):
Internet, explain discuss I just cover anything on the Internet
that seems interesting at the time. A lot of it
lately has been, you know, Elon Musk taking over the
company formerly known as Twitter. But a lot of it
is just how you know, politics and media on the
Internet intersect. So a lot of it is Trump and
a lot of it is Elon, TikTok, all that sort
(34:49):
of fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
So let's talk about Elon Mosk. Incredible stuff here. You
had a scoop yesterday, the champion free speech. He has
an interesting way of dealing with things he doesn't like.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
Yeah, and if you're using Twitter, sorry X, and you
want to click on a link to a story, you
expect to go immediately through to that other story. That's
how it has always worked. That is how it works
for pretty much every website. Except we started running some
tests yesterday and found that there were a pool of
(35:25):
websites that actually get a five second delay. So when
you click on it, it just goes to gray for
five seconds. It wastes your time for five seconds before
you can actually access the link. Twitter X does that
now or did that yesterday? When we tested for The
New York Times. Reuter's Facebook Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Substack,
(35:50):
and the connective tissue on all of those is all
of those websites have upset Elon Musk to some degree.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
He has gone on a.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
Tirade against you know and the New York Times and
Reuters for doing accurate reporting that has made him look bad.
He's obviously been in this long suffering slap match with
Mark Zuckerbird, who owns you know, Facebook, Instagram and threads,
bluse Guy and substack or our Twitter rivals. So here
(36:19):
what we saw was, you know, Elon Musk appears to
be behind the scenes pushing a button to waste everybody's time,
slow the traffic to all of these properties that he
personally dislikes, and do it in this really secretive way
so people would not even realize what was happening, and
they might click a link and it might go gray
(36:40):
and they might say, Okay, well, I don't want to
go there anyway, and that can have a real impact
on the website because they lose traffic and add revenue.
So it was a very secretive, malicious thing to do.
And we don't have any evidence that this was just
sort of a technical clitch because it only isolated these websites.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I want you to.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Get to the punchline here, which is as soon as
you reported about it.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
M yeah, a couple hours after we reported on it,
the delay magically started to disappear. We could actually see
it in the test. This delay that was stuck at
around five seconds just started going away, and you could
magically get to that website. So very clearly, I mean,
X and Elon never never addressed it in any meaningful way,
but once.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
We can get reported on it.
Speaker 6 (37:27):
No, and Elon actually blocked my emails when I started
asking about it, you know, so this is you know,
from anybody else, it would be almost too petty to believe.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
But this is Elon Musk we're dealing with. This is
this is just kind of his playbook.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Right, No, I mean it is super interesting to me, Like,
I think it's interesting because this kind of thing, there's
always been so much paranoia about Twitter from the left,
first from the right, and now I think from the
left this paranoia may actually be warranted. This story is
proof that they're in there monkeying around, right. So I
(38:01):
wanted to ask you, like it used to be, people
would say, you'll remember the days of old when Twitter
was like a normal company run like a normal company,
people would always say Conservatives would always say, I'm being
shadow banned, I'm being throttled.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Was that happening then?
Speaker 1 (38:18):
And also if it was happening, then is it happening
now in the other way or.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Is there just not enough evidence?
Speaker 6 (38:24):
Yeah, I mean that's the hilarious point of all of this. So,
back before Elon had bought it, Yeah, like you said,
there was the constant griping about shadow banning. Anytime, you know,
someone typically on the right would tweet something that they
felt like didn't get enough likes or retweets, they would say,
oh lord, the shadow banning is happening again.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
The liberals in Silicon Valley are out to get me.
You know.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
There was never really any systemic proof of any of that,
and actually the research ended up finding that conservative viewpoints
on the platform got more attention and they were actually
less suppressed. But that was the reason and why Elon
took it over to begin with. He felt like there
was this massive injustice happening. Now once he's taking it over,
(39:08):
instead of you know, balancing out the force and making
it so there's no shadow banding happening. To anybody we
can actually tell there's legitimate, you know, behind the scenes
algorithmic tinkering happening in the other direction against all of
the So, you know, this just again belies the whole
free speech absolutist claim that Elon Musk has always set
(39:31):
it out himself. And this, you know, these throttlings that
he did yesterday, Like it's hard to even remember all
of the examples he has put together in the last
twelve months of just taking down things he disagrees with.
Of course, he took down the elon jet account that
tracks his private jet. He banned journalists who covered that,
including me and many others for reporting on it. These
(39:55):
are not things that you would expect from like a
First Amendment free speed champion. But this is Elon musk playground.
He has decided that it's his rule and he can
just sort of do whatever he wants. And hey, he
paid forty four billion for it, and he's getting his
money out of it.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I read reporting that said that actually, some of these
autocratic governments like Saudiowabia and Turkey, and I can't exactly
remember who, but the people we don't generally think of
as the good guys, India has an autocrat as a
leader right now. That some of those places, and again
(40:31):
I can't remember exactly what countries, so I don't want
to be wrong here, but that they had actually asked
Elon to throttle some of the content and that he
had gone along with it.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Yeah, that has happened. That you mentioned India, that was
specifically one of the bigger examples. Governments were asking x
slash Twitter to remove specific tweets that they didn't like
from political advocates, dissidents, just people they didn't want on
the platform. And Twitter has never been a perfect company.
It has always been problematic. But before Elon took it over,
(41:06):
it was known for kind of fighting these battles a
little bit, either you know, from a legal standpoint in
court or just you know, the officials in the company
saying no, we have all these rules. Elon has kind
of bent over backwards to placate these governments by removing
this content. And he, you know, when he has been
called out for this, hey, not very free speech, he
(41:28):
has said, well, what are.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
You going to do? You know, we want we.
Speaker 6 (41:32):
Want clients in India. The government's asking us very nicely,
who are we to say. And so you know, again,
it's not just free speech when it's speech you like
or it's easy for you. Elon just sort of has
used the free speech idea as a cudgel really against
the ideas he doesn't seem to like. And then when
(41:54):
a government comes along and asks for that. So, yeah,
it's been a it's been a big frustration. You know,
we see these problems here in America, but we don't
even really know the extent of the problem overseas, where
you know, Twitter remains still pretty influential.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
It's such an interesting bit of projection.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
So basically all of the things that Elon accused old
Twitter of doing, he is now doing at.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
X basically, yeah, and inventing new and surprising ways to
do it right.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
And you know, and we've.
Speaker 6 (42:24):
Seen a couple of weeks ago there was an account,
it's kind of like a far right account, that posted
an image of child sexual abuse. This is the kind
of thing that would never have it allowed on the platform.
That has always been you know, the company has always
had we have zero tolerance. If you post that, we're
(42:44):
reporting it to the authorities. Your band, you're out of
here as well. It should be right for child pornography. Yes,
everyone would expect that, everyone wants that. The industry just
operates like that, and so it was really kind of
you know, even for the people who it's hard to
surprise around Twitter anymore, including me, it was surprising when
Elon allowed this far right influencer to come back on Twitter.
(43:08):
They deleted the post with the image. They basically gave
less than a slap on the wrist. And that far
right influencer has remained on Twitter and is now getting
paid through the ad revenue share. So got like two
thousand dollars from Twitter just for you know, outrage and
engagement that they get on Twitter. So Twitter is cannot
be any more different than it was even a year ago.
(43:31):
Is really just become Elon Musk's a sandbox of whenever
he wants, and he's constantly sort of pushing the boundaries
on what's acceptable and that you know, you see that
and the user base and how people are going away.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That's an incredible bit of sorcery right there. So here
we are Elon is engaged in monetizing the platform, whatever
that looks like. So it seems to me like what
Elon had always wanted was to make it so.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
And I think this.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Is a lot of tech pros were like this. They
sort of thought, like, what does the mainstream media do nothing?
We're going to just recreate it by getting our guys
to sort of make their own media, right, Like that
was sort of the idea.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I mean, we saw him tweet about it.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We saw David Sachs, we saw all of his like
tech pros get very excited about this.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And they were like, this is easy.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Will replace you know, We'll replace a liberal outlet with
the crass and Steen, We'll replace the Wall Street Journal
with Bill Mitchell.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
You know, how hard can it be?
Speaker 1 (44:35):
And that was sort of the monetizing situation too, was
that you know, then you would make more money. You
know whatever has that worked out for them?
Speaker 6 (44:44):
It hasn't and not yet, I mean, and this has
been the challenge for like you said, the whole kind
of right wing internet experiment. And this happened during the
Trump years where they said, you know, after January sixth,
really when some of these websites for being deplatformed, you know,
Parlor disappeared, and you saw the companies go, well, we
(45:05):
have to create our we don't need Amazon anymore.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
We don't need Twitter.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
We'll create truth Social and Rumble, and those websites all
have by and large not been successful. I mean, they
have built niche audiences, but they are not anywhere near
the mainstream networks. And the big problem with those is
there's no libs to own on their right, it's just
(45:29):
all it's all preaching to the choir, and it gets
a little boring. I mean even on the people on
there say, you know, why do I just want to
look at the same memes all day? So Elon, I
guess he thought maybe he could do it differently with
Twitter by sort of taking this a social network that
you know, a lot of the popular influencers on there.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
Were effectively liberals, right.
Speaker 6 (45:50):
You had a lot of celebrities and politicians and comedians
and they you know, they were a journalist and a
lot of people who were just you know, on the side.
He felt like was too woke and too left, and
he felt like, well, I'm just going to come in
and I'm going to make it more central around these
kinds of ideas. And so you saw him elevating people
(46:11):
like libs of TikTok and other sort of anti trans
accounts and the makeup of Twitter started to change really quickly,
and a lot of the technical levers he's been pulling
since then have been kind of in service of that ideal.
I mean, there's a reason why Tucker Carlson has his
show on x now instead of anywhere else and so,
(46:34):
but financial, you know, so culturally, I think he has
been able to shift the vibe of the website, but
financially it's still like a huge loser. I mean, AD revenue,
even as he has admitted AD revenue has plunged.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
A lot of companies just don't want to be selling. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (46:53):
Yeah, that's the way to put Clorox wipes and shoes
next to like a bunch of kooks.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
All right, did the Holocaust really happen? Yeah, so let
me ask you the monetizing. So a lot of people
last month got like ten fifteen thousand dollars. The Crafts
and Steans were the sort of held up as the
liberal example of this. Now you'll remember the Crafts and
Steins really do work in service to Elon, despite maybe
(47:21):
not being far right. They were kicked off Twitter originally
for operating a bond network. So these guys are pretty sketch.
They got money libs of TikTok. A lot of conservative
influencers got money, but did normal people get money.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Nobody offered me any money. I mean, like, let's talk
about that.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:39):
So the elevator pitch was buy Twitter Blue ex blue
for eight dollars a month and you will be rewarded
potentially with this big ad revenue split. All of the
fine print, though, is why it's been so unbalanced. Like,
to get money, you have to have a certain amount
of like views on your tweets or X posts or whatever.
(48:03):
I think it's something like five million a month or something,
and those have to only come from other ex blue subscribers, Right,
So these are other people who have paid eight dollars
a month, yeah, who are yeah, leaning more conservatives. So
you start to read through all the fine prints, and
when we've done the research, it's a vanishingly small crust
(48:24):
of people who are getting the payouts from this. Of course,
when they get the payouts, they go on to X
and say, oh my gosh, I'm rich, and so it
creates this like flywheel. I mean that's what Elon wants,
I assume, is to get everybody feeling like, hey, I
could get paid for this too, but we have not
seen this, you know, reaching down to the normal people.
And to be clear, like you know, the creator economy
(48:45):
of people making money off YouTube and TikTok and Twitch,
it's it's always kind of a one percent economy. Some
people get like fabulously rich and a lot of people
get nothing. But Twitter is just it's become really clear
that just the people, and like you said, with the
craft and scenes, to get money, you really have to farm.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
Engagement in whatever way you can.
Speaker 6 (49:05):
And it's actually kind of made Twitter somehow even more
crass because you can you can almost see people stunting
for hate clicks and retweets and just posting the kind
of crud online that you don't really want to see
but just works to get people clicking because that's what
they need to get, you know, another couple cents on
(49:28):
their Twitter paycheck. And I always want to like remind
people Twitter is not some fabulously money making company and
it never has been. Yeah, so this is all I mean,
they're kind of burning money. Some people have described this
as really kind of desperate, because this is Twitter saying
we're going to give payouts to people to keep using
(49:48):
our product.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
It's like a quasi bribe.
Speaker 6 (49:51):
Obviously, Twitter before this never had to pay people to
be creating content on Twitter, and yet it was still
this cultural juggernaut. So the fact that Elon had to
be handing out checks to accomplish the same just shows
how struggling they are.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
We be banking on X. I personally do not want
to give him.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
I have to say, after my experience with Elon owning Twitter,
I want to neither let him put something in my
brain nor give him my Social Security number.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Discuss Yeah, I mean that's a good question.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
I'm sorry you're not on the opinion side.
Speaker 6 (50:27):
But you can buy an Elon Musk car, you can
get in an Elon Musk rocket, you can go in
an Elon Musk tunnel, Elon Musk, brain chips, flamethrowers. Again,
I'm not an opinion people. A lot of people love
Elon Musk. I mean this has always been the way
I covered Tesla before Twitter. There has always been an
army of Elon Musk stands who you know, see the
(50:49):
iron Man, see the guy who takes no gov says
what he wants. I think that audience has obviously changed
a lot. It's not like just nerdy type anymore. You
see this big sort of maga love fest that's come
to him. But I mean it's it's hurting the other businesses.
You can see the other businesses. They're all getting distracted
(51:09):
by this. I mean people who wanted to buy it
to Tesla. Tesla purchases are down. Twitter usage is down,
so you know, the circus around Elon does have an effect.
Not normies don't always want to be buing into that.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
I mean.
Speaker 6 (51:23):
But then again, you know, Twitter is still still very popular.
It's still beating Threads and Blue Sky and masks On
and all these all these others. But those companies are
are rising, and it's just the start of sort of
Elon Musk's regime.
Speaker 4 (51:36):
So can he you know.
Speaker 6 (51:37):
And this is a guy who has to pay a
billion dollars a year just to pay the debt for
this company.
Speaker 7 (51:41):
So I don't think time is on elon must side.
Oh well, thank you shut threatened me with a good time.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
I hope you'll come back true.
Speaker 4 (51:53):
Yes, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Moment.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast, that Roger stone Man who
doesn't really give a lot of fucks and really always
thinks he's the smartest one in the room.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
Well, I think he got him some trouble.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Well, this is like such a great moment in Roger
stone lore. He is out on bail from his conviction
in the Mueller probe, as Andrew Weissman noted, and he
is already this is like two days after the election
in November. It was before it was called, but it
(52:34):
was a few days after the voting had happened, and
we already really knew the writing on the wall, and
Roger Stone had decided that this was the way they
were going to so doubt. You know what's funny about
all these things is like, if you're going to do crimes,
who is videotaping this are Why is he being videotaped
all the time? Anyway, I just want to say, if
(52:56):
you're going to do crimes, don't do them on video.
That is my I'm not a defense lawyer. I don't
even play one on TV. And yet, if you're gonna
do crimes, don't do them on video.
Speaker 4 (53:07):
You know the wire they said, don't take notes on
a criminal operation because doing video on it would be
even stupider. Yeah, that's what Nicole said today.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
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.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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