August 26, 2024 • 48 mins
LIVE FROM THE DNC! The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson tells us why RFK Jr. endorsing Trump isn’t what everyone is saying it is. Rep. Don Beyer shares details about being in college at 74 to learn AI. Caroline Gleich discusses her run for Mitt Romney’s old seat. Rep. Rosa DeLauro examines how VP Harris changes the game. Colorado General Assembly member Manny Rutinel details efforts to clean up one of the most polluted areas in America.
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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 discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And we are live from the DNC again with an
absolutely insane lineup of people who will tell you such
interesting things about what's going on in America.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Rep.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Don Bayer stops by to tell us why he's in
college at seventy four to leorre an Ai. Then we'll
talk to Caroline Glee, who's running for Mitt Romney's old
seat in Utah, and she'll tell us how we'll turn
that seat blue. Then we'll talk to Rep. Rose de
World about how VP Harris changes the game. Ben Many Routtinall,
who's a member of the Colorado General Assembly. We'll talk
about cleaning up one of the most polluted areas in America.
(00:38):
But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
the Link of Projects owned Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Welcome back, Few Fast Politics, My buddy Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Hello, Molly John Fast. We are both on the same
West coach right now.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
We are on our West Coast leg of our blockbuster tour.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Yes we are, and it is and folks, if you're
looking for information on our blockbuster tour. It's politics as unusual.
Dot bio bio move quickly because to our surprise, people
actually want to hear us do our hi juice and
for volity on stage, and it's selling out fast. I'm
very importned by that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you're listening to this and you're in San Francisco,
because this comes out tomorrow, you can come tonight and
listen to us in San Francisco. There are tickets. Look
on our social media. We both have been tweeting about it, We've.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Been reading about it. People were sick of us.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I think there are very few tickets, but there certainly
are one or two. On Tuesday, we are in Los Angeles,
and a few tickets left for that too, we think,
though who knows, but check it out. So Rick Wilson,
we are gonna do two seconds sort of wrap up
on the convention, and then we have a lot of other.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Stuff to talk about.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
But I do think it's important to talk about the
convention because even though we were both there, so we
have been like living in I want you to talk
about this because you have so much more experience with
this and have been at so many conventions and also
on the wrong side of No.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
I was at a couple of Democratic conventions on the
spin team for the Republicans.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah no, no, that's why I say on the wrong
side of it, but I thought so as a partisan
on the opinion side, it felt to me like, I mean,
maybe the speeches could have been a little shorter, but
ultimately it could not have gone any better.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Well, speaking of speeches being the right length, the fact
that Vice President Harris delivered a thirty eight minute speech
instead of a ninety two minute speech, it makes it difference.
I mean, Dorobald Trump on his acceptance speech and I
couldn't remember a single detail from it other than me, me, me.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
And how long did Harris speak?
Speaker 4 (02:46):
For thirty eight it was perfect. It was right on
the money, and people need to remember we live in
a shorter attention span world than most speech writers myself
including grew up. Yet Right always makes the key mistake
in his speeches of going full cast going for like
its for the audience starts to suffer from dehydration.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah no, I definitely he goes bolcastro. I would almost
say he goes full Mussolini.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
It is rather Mussolini asked. But look, I will say
this about this convention. Molly, as an observer of these things,
is an attendee of many of these things. The only
people who were complaining at this convention were the media
and Obo, who.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm very conflicted because I am a member of the
mainstream media, and I also know how imboardant the mainstream
media is to democracy, and I do think that the
DNC did not treat them with the kind of reverence
that perhaps they are used to. I also feel like
the mainstream media has been equally virulent towards anti democracy
(03:48):
and we want to give free breakfast.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
The attitude by some folks in the press that was,
you know, she won't sit down for a four hour interview,
she won't do this, she won't do that. I guess
somebod that was taking it out on her for that.
But this is not a campaign, Molly, with two normal candidates.
It's a campaign with one guy who is compactive, detached,
realery and.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Also wants to end American democracy. Like he's crazy. But
he was crazy in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Now he's ready to end the American experiment and his
people are with him.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
They are.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
And my take on the speech itself was it was
one of the most important speeches in modern political history.
She in thirty eight minutes, managed to illustrate the stakes
for the country, diminish and condemn Trump in the appropriate way,
and to show a new way forward for the Democratic
Party on how to run and win and how to
expand with coalition. You know, there are a lot of
(04:41):
my former you know, Republicans and fellow you never Trumpers.
During that speech, all of our chats were burning up, like,
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this
is amazing. And it really spoke to me that a
lot of the sort of gentry Republicans who are, oh,
I don't like Trump's greets, but I do like his policy.
A lot of those people were the most outraged by
(05:04):
the speech. How dare she talk about freedom? How dares
she talk about strength? That's not her had a very
stoppy foot kind of piece in the journal about it,
which tells you it was effective, which tells you it
was the right way.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
To approach it.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
So look, I think that I think the convention, in
terms of its optics, in terms of its composition of
the speakers, including a lot of former Republicans who are
voting Democratic now, really sends a signal to the country.
They did not fall into what I call the Benetton
trap of the Democratic Party, which for years has been
sort of every single interest group has to have all
(05:42):
of its things on the stage all the time. And
by showing America that you can be a Democrat and
be patriotic, that you can shout USA, USA, or you
can wave an American flag and not feel like MAGA
owns it. That's a really important message coming out of
this because the ownership in the culture of the symbols
and signifiers of American history and American political life are
(06:05):
things that people love. If all of the Republicans use them,
fly them, talk about them, you know, it goes back
to the old white, pale Pastel's problem for the Democrats,
and they've gotten away from it at long last. And
I think it has had an enormously powerful effect on
where the ticket is right now, where the campaign is
right now.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I also think that when you watch, it's pretty interesting
to watch these Republicans get mad about it when they
gave it away. Donald Trump gave away patriotism. Yeah, he
ran on America's lescape. He ran on you know, suckers
and losers as I mean, you know, as much as
he backed away from it, he also ran on it
American isolationism.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
That was how he got here.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So you know, I'm not conflicted, but I do think
that speech was not a speech for the Democratic base,
which makes sense because you know, she's trying to win
a general election here and you saw some people that
were on the far left were mad about some of
the elements in it. But here's the fundamental problem, and
it's what is currently sinking Donald Trump. And it's a
(07:08):
problem for all political candidates, which is you have to
appeal to your base but then grow your electorate. And
Donald Trump is just you know, in twenty sixteen, somehow
he managed to sneak it through the you know, sort
of win by just embracing his base and saying fuck
you to everyone else. And now you can't keep winning
(07:30):
elections like that, and that is where Donald Trump is
stuck in. I mean, I think a really interesting thing
that we saw today, which just spoke to me, was
in playbook this morning.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Right, Donald Trump is now pivoted to be pro choice.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
The Donald Trump truth the other day of my administration
be great for women's rights.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I'm like women's reproductives, great ups what.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
What Yeah, that was incredible. So they had Lyla Rose.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Who was the founder of the anti abortion group Live Action.
Complete lunatic only is it not principled. It's not going
to help Trump campaign to be trying to sound like
a Democrat.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Right now, yesterday and.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
The day before, Donald Trump has been on truth social NonStop.
He has been flailing around NonStop. Now having been on
the road now for a couple of weeks. The things
I've been hearing out of the Trump world. There was
a senior Trump person who's a meaningful part of their
campaign who actually took three days off last week. And really,
I'm off in Trump World right now when the building
(08:29):
is on fire and the occupant is spreading gas around
it everywhere. I mean, this thing is teetering, and I
don't want people to get cocky, and I want people
to overestimate where we are. It will still be a
brutal race, guys. There are still a lot of money
that will come out for him in the end. There's
still a lot of fuckery occurring. A lot of them
are counting on corruption in election offices like in Georgia
(08:52):
and elsewhere to pull out a fake win in the end.
So I don't want people to be complacent, but right now,
everything they've thrown at Harrison Walls has failed. Everything they've
tried the new to reset Trump has failed. Everything they've
tried to do to rebuild his momentum has failed. You know,
on Friday, when Tony Fabrizio, his polster, Toney the pollster,
(09:14):
came out with that poll that made you know, even
the guys at Rasmus and go, whoa easy their pal
So seven points in Arizona. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's where
it is. But when you see them trying to manage
him that way, and you see him able to control
his impulses and his statements and trying to spend things
(09:35):
that are unspinnable, and trying to get back the mojo
he had in sixteen on social media where he could
tweet something and then the Clinton campaign would respond with
like a fourteen page memo about the tweet. People would
be freaked out and it would be the top of
the news and all that other shit. But look, he's
also facing up some stuff that he is really really
going to break him. The Federal Reserve is going to
(09:56):
cut rates, Gas prices at the barrel are plunged, right now.
The reason you're paying a lot for gas is not
because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It's because gas
prices up the barrelhead have been low, and gas companies
have been working. You. We're such a low point that
they're gonna have to that they're going to cut prices significantly.
You're going to end up at the by the rest
(10:16):
of the whatever's left of the summer and end of
the fall, with inflation going down, your rates going down,
and gas going down. You just took away one of
the underlying predicates of Donald Trump's.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Campaign, right right, No, no, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So let's talk about RFK because Jesse wants us to
talk about RFK.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
I want to never talk about RFK.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
How did RFK get locked in that room with five
rabbit wolves? Man?
Speaker 6 (10:39):
That was really word.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
The wolves struck back.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But no, it's not funny to talk about terrible things
happening to people, you know.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
But let's talk about RFK for a minute.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
RFK has i supposedly and again we are talking about
things that RFK has self reported, So take all of
this with a grain of salt. But he said that
he had wanted to meet with Harris, and she had refused.
I think that is a good call on her part
if true.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Do you know why she refused because she's a lawyer. Yeah,
she knew that what he was doing was say, I
want to meet with you to fight, figure out what
position you'll give me when I quit.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Now, look, I am not one of those people who
thinks that Donald Trump is going to get indicted on
whatever statutory restriction that comes under by the time the
election rolls around. But I should just remind you he
does not mind.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Criming, right right, No, No, he's a good trade of criming.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And also he never gets held accountable, unlike Harris, who does.
Because if there's one thing we've learned in Trump's America,
so Trump can get away with anything and no one
else can, not even his people.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Molly, Can I just say something about that? That's the
double standard that I have. You know, it's not just
both sides in them, Okay, Right, It's like, why hasn't
Vice President Harris produced a nine hundred page plan on
climate change or a page plan on healthcare or whatever
it is. Why won't she personally brief us on every
detail on page forty seven of the Climate and Donald
(12:08):
Trump goes out and says, I'm going to throw my
shit all over the place like a monkey in a zoo,
and they go, oh, yes, Well, Trump's policies are very
clearly understood by the voters, and I mean right.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
But look, there's quite a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yes, but Jesse really wants us to talk about what
OURFK Junior are leaving the race means. And the reality
is people will tell you a lot of bullshit, but
nobody really knows right. So on Friday, someone very smart
politically said to me, oh, it's going to hurt her.
But then this weekend I saw some poll ling and
writing that said, actually, it may not do anything. So
(12:44):
the reality is we don't really know what it's going
to do. It could hurt her, it could not hurt her.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
If RFK Junior was a beloved son of the Kennedy family,
a symbolic through line of the legacy of the Kennedys
RFK and JFK, it would be something. But what we
saw from RFK as he unwound this campaign, Let's not
forget he was put in the campaign because Bannon and
(13:12):
Stone and Tucker and others said, if you do this,
it'll fuck Joe Biden. There's a core paper trail on that.
During the course of his campaign, he was talking to
a group of people who are Trump voters to some degree,
the conspiracy nuts. But he was also trying to maintain
this I'm the do good or independent bullshit, which was
(13:33):
awkward and false all the time, but none of it
was really working at scale. Right.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
He was doing better before he started campaign.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
He was doing better before people started knowing that he
was RFK junior. While the dead bear and the falconry
and the drugs and all the other weird shit, while
those things were all sort of background noise to it,
I don't think people hadn't fully internalized that this guy
is pro polio. This guy is truly a dark bad guy.
(14:04):
And when I see his polio folks, he doesn't just
oppose MNRA vaccines. He opposes all vaccines.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Yes he does.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
If you worked to kidd an iron lung of Republican Barbaria,
probably have you noticed how much the magas are trying
to make RFK a thing. It's all che everything's different now,
the whole election has been turned right down. We went
and get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I think That's a really important point too, is that
Republicans keep saying like this is a game changer, and
this change is in the election that but ultimately we
don't really know what it does.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
We have some initial brush fire stuff on it. We're
not really seeing this as changing the ballgame because a
lot of RFK voters, it turns out, are in states
where the decisions already made. We know how that state's
could already go. They're not as prevalent as a percentage
of the voting population in a lot of the swing
states as they are in a few places where he's
(15:00):
much more popular. And look, all of the panic over RFK,
I think is going to fade in comparison to the
fact that RFK said Trump wants me to meet his
running mate Donald Trump. Literally you tweeted a thing about
calling the two of them that ticket. If I were Jadvan,
I'd get a food taster, some level four body armor,
and I'd up my security procedures.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Do we think that Trump?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I mean, obviously the ballots are already No.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
No, they're mostly printed. Oh, by the way, that's the
other part of this. RFK is going to come off
the ballot in a lot of states. He's going to
stay on the ballot in a lot of states too,
And if he stays on the ballot, that's no good
for Trump. He doesn't get to like at the end
of it, I'm giving my votes to Trump after the
election's over. That's not how any of this works.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Yeah, good point, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
We have even more toward dates for you. Did you
know the linked projects, Rick Wilson have Fast Politics, Bolli
jug Faster heading out on towur to bring you night
of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on
August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall,
or in la on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater.
Then we're headed to the Midwest and we'll be at
the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September,
(16:14):
and on the twenty second we'll be in Chicago at
City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast.
On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at
the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be Infilliate
City Winery, and then DC on the second at the
Miracle Theater and today. We just announced that we'll be
in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery.
If you need to laugh as we get through this
election and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives
(16:36):
in a golf club again, we got you covered. Join
us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead
of cry your way through this election season and give
you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now.
Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual
dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio. Don Buyer
represents Virginia's eighth district.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Welcome too, Fast, Congressman Don Bayer, John Fast.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
It's very exciting to have you.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
You are the luckiest congressman because you do have just
a crazy commute to work, right.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
It's a crazy commute. And more members of Congress, the staffs,
the retired members, a more peace scorps volunteers, more generals.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
That it's a very politics is our cottage industry?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Oh wow, that's something, So let's talk about You wanted
to understand AI, so you went back to college.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
What does that explain?
Speaker 7 (17:31):
Well, I wanted to understand it for a long time
because I was just fascinated with the idea that we're
generating so much information that we can't sort through. We
can't see the connections, whether they are causation or correlation,
we just don't see them at all. And I tried
to do it on Coursera, Yeah, but I didn't have
enough math background to succeed.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
So a couple of years ago, all of us.
Speaker 7 (17:51):
Three years ago, I went back to our local university,
George Mason University, and started taking the prerequisites for a
graduate program.
Speaker 6 (17:58):
In machine learning.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
How was that?
Speaker 6 (18:01):
It's fun? I'm not even halfway through sixteen.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
You'll literally go, you're really doing that?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
Next Monday I start my course on data structures and
I have to drive out to Fairfax Monday and Wednesday.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Drives my congressional schedule crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
So here's my question for you.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
One of the ways in which Congress is criticized is
that a lot of people say this, including myself, not
that I don't love you guys, but there's not enough
tech regulation. And some of it is because a lot
of members don't understand technology. Now, you obviously taking an
AI course. You know you're doing an AI graduate program,
so you obviously understand it better than probably ninety nine
(18:40):
percent of Americans, let alone members of Congress. But is
that true and why is there so little tech regulation?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
Well, the classic case, Molly is social media were the
only thing we'd done in twenty five years to say
we can't soothe them, right. We gave them immunity for lawsuits,
which is crazy. So we're trying not to make that
mistake again. The various AI task forces up there, the
most important one was appointed by the current Speaker and
by HACKEM Jefferies, twelve Democrats, twelve Republicans.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
So trying to put together.
Speaker 7 (19:09):
A meaningful set of legislative initiatives like next month, you know,
but we should report by the end of September, hopefully
pass a bunch by the end of this year.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
Wow. So we're trying to get ahead.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
It's naive to think we'll ever be ahead of the
American public, but we're trying not.
Speaker 6 (19:24):
To make the same social media mistake.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I hate to hold Europe up as an example here,
but they've done a better job with regulating social media
and it's made a lot of big tech companies very mad,
which is probably a good sign. Do you think something
like that could happen here.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
I do you know Europe has already passed an AI
Act while the EUAI Act, and they worked really hard
on it.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
I met with them half a dozen times.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
It's generally perceived by most people in America, including the
AI companies, as being too prescriptive.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Of course, too legislative. You got to sign up for licensing.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
You don't like any legislation. That's why they think it's
too legislating.
Speaker 7 (20:01):
And you know, but we're getting all the creativity and
inventiveness and stuff out of America, so we're trying to
do light touch. We're trying to address not regulation for
regulation's sake, but rather where there's a downside. For example,
think deep fakes, think the challenges with child sexual assault material,
the way people are using AI to trash their boyfriends
or their girlfriends that dumped them, things like that.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
So, as someone who comes from journalism, we made a
lot of free content for tech companies.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
They used it and.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Basically destroyed all the media companies by using our free content.
I mean, is there anything prescriptive that Congress could pass?
Speaker 6 (20:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (20:38):
You know, they've started talking mally year ago about or
two years ago about watermarking. But it has to go
much deeper than that, because right now, if you're a
photographer and illustrator, when all that stuff gets loaded into
one of the big engines, anybody can create something without
ever needing an all illustrator or a photographer.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
Again, the same thing with.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
Poets with music, right with books, Yeah, you publish a
book right now, two or three days later, some version
of that has been generated by AIH and as being marketed.
So there's a lot more to go to protect intellectual property.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yeah, And do you think that can happen?
Speaker 7 (21:09):
I think it has to happen Otherwise who's going to
create content if you take away all the monetary centers?
For example, I know the motion picture industry is terrified,
right about what.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
Something like that?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
That really does seem like an important thing. Do you
think there's a bipartisan appetite.
Speaker 7 (21:24):
For that, Yeah, Molly, the good is so far it's
very bipartisan. The twenty four people of jayobernoltire Republican from California,
tedlu a Democrat from California, lead the effort, and then
they've worked hard to try to make sure that that
stayed together. I think once one of the big challenges
out there right now is the idea of trying to
create some kind of long term digital idea that belongs
(21:48):
to Molly jong Fast or Don Bayer, that we'll get
away from all the identity theft. That's the only place
I've seen Republican pushback because they begin to think world
government or I know, the government's going to know too.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Much about songs in women's medical offices.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
But nowhere else, nowhere else, Yes, in the bedroom.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
By the way, are you you have been doing this
for a while, although also ambassadorships, et cetera. Are you
surprised at how far right the Republican Party has gone?
Speaker 7 (22:19):
It's nowhere near the Republican Party that I knew. I
starved eight years in the Virginia Senate. Completely different.
Speaker 6 (22:25):
Yeah than this.
Speaker 7 (22:25):
I mean, we used to work together all the time.
You can never predict how the vote was going to
turn out here. You know it'll be two eighteen to
two fourteen. Almost every time it was contested.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That no fault divorce thing, Republicans are very passionate about
repealing no fault divorce signed into law by Ronald Reagan
in California, discuss there's.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
So many things that they're talking about.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
You know, there are the restrictions on contraception IVF personhood
at you know, when the sperm hits the ovum.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Yeah, that are that are just way out of the mainstream.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
I just think about when you divorced, when somebody had
to be wrong, somebody had to do something really evil
to do it. So many people were victimized, thrown under
the bus, and or families were forced to stay together that.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
Were really bad for them and bad for the children. Yeah,
and certainly repressed women's.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, all it's right. Yeah, thank you so much, Congressman.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
Yeah, thank you, Molly good luck.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so are we,
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episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly Jong
Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you
are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
you can hit play and put your phone in the
lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
We need to educate.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
to this country. So please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Caroline Gleek is a candidate for Senate in Utah.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Caroline, who is running for the
Mint Romney Senate seat in the great state of Utah.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
That is correct. How are you going to do it?
Speaker 8 (24:26):
We are going to get young voters to turn out,
to get women to turn out, and you know, when
young voters and women turn out, we win.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So Utah start a state in the Democrats talk about
that much.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
Tell us what you could do in Utah.
Speaker 8 (24:40):
Utah isn't to state that the Democratic parties really had
their radar on, and I think that is a mistake
because Utah is already a lot more purple than it seems.
And in our last presidential election, young LDS voters increasingly
voted Democratic.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
Interesting, Yes, and we were really.
Speaker 8 (24:56):
Encouraged also by the results of Nikki Haley really reject Trump.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Yeah, and yeah, it's already a lot more purple.
Speaker 8 (25:04):
Fifty three percent of voters in Utah are registered Republican
and then a lot of those low are Democrats that
file that registered Republican to vote in the closed primaries.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
So yeah, Donald Trump has been really alienated the LDS community.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 1 (25:20):
He still was able to get Mike Lee, but it
was real sacrilege.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
Can you talk about that? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (25:27):
Utah voters, we are you know, we have a global perspective, right,
We're really tolerant of immigrants, right, and we're warm, inclusive people.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:35):
And the Trump agenda, his rhetoric, his status as a
convicted felon, the way he openly brags about assaulting women,
it's not who we are as Utah's right.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:47):
So Utah voters, in our hearts, we are a really
warm and inclusive people, global perspective, and we're really ready
to make some big democratic gains in the state.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
What is your race looking like? Who is your opponent?
Tell us a little bit.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
Yes, Yes, I won the Democratic Convention with ninety three
percent of the votes, so I'll be on the ballot
in November.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
And my opponent is a career politician.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
He's currently serving in the House of Representatives, so he's
running to serve in the Senate.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
Now.
Speaker 8 (26:19):
And he's a really interesting guy. He's very nice, very charismatic.
I've worked with him a lot in my role as
a citizen and climate activist in Congress.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
He talks a big game about what he's.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
Going to do for environment, for climate, but when he
gets into Congress he actually has a worse environmental voting
record than Mike Lee.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (26:36):
Yes, he's the founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, yet
he's consistently voted to undermine protections for aaron water.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
He's a greenwasher.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Why do you think that the Republicans can't get interested
in climate?
Speaker 8 (26:49):
Just like anything in politics, we have to change the
role that big money plays. Yeah, but when you look
at who is funding their campaigns, you see how they
have to vote. And he is one of the top
recipients from the fossil fuel industry in Congress, and the
top recipient from our electric utility provider. So you follow
(27:09):
the money and then you see how they vote.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
What does climate change look like into Utah?
Speaker 8 (27:13):
First and foremost, we have a huge impact to our
public health from the air quality. The average uton dies
on average two years early because of the air quality.
During these periods of poor air quality, we see an
increased a sixteen percent increased rate of miscarriages. We see
cardiac events, mental health challenges asthma. So we get really
(27:34):
bad air from the burning of fossil fuels and the
way it gets kind of trapped in our Teacup Valley
where most of the population of Utah lives. And then
we've been seeing unprecedented wildfire seasons. We have been seeing
so many days of record breaking heat. Just we used
to have only a few days over one hundred degrees
and now we have these really long stretches, and our
(27:56):
population that's experiencing homelessness, which has also been in crazy.
They're dying of the heat.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
Tourists are dying of heat in the national parks.
Speaker 8 (28:04):
And then in the winter we're seeing more snow that's
falling as rain, which is a big problem for our
ski industry and the snowsports economy, which is a major
major part of our economy there. Yeah, so those are
just some of the impacts, but we expect to see
a lot worse wildfires, flooding, and other public health impacts.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Yeah. So interesting and also so upsetting. How it is.
Can people find out more about you?
Speaker 8 (28:28):
They can go to our website Caroline for Utah dot
com c A R O L I N E FO
r Utah dot com. If you can, you can chip
in a couple bucks. You can do that from any
state in the nation. Any American citizen can chip in
and it would really go a long way to ensuring
we can run the most competitive campaign. And then if
you want to sign up to volunteer, we can also
(28:48):
have postcard and phone banking opportunities around the nation and
we would really appreciate it because every Senate state counts
and we can't turn our back on the investments into
these states because we are going take Utah and make
it into blue Talk.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
Thank you, Caroline.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Rose. The world represents Connecticut's third district.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
I'm so excited to have you. Welcome to Congress. Woman.
Thank you. You have done this for a while.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
You have been to a few conventions I have you
have been, you know, one of the really important members
who's gotten a ton done progressive legislation. You're just sort
of a beloved member of Congress. What does it feel
like to be in this Hairess convention?
Speaker 5 (29:35):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 9 (29:36):
First of all, thank you for the kind words as well.
I love what I do. I'm blessed to be able
to serve in the House of Representatives. But I have
been to a number of conventions since nineteen eighty four.
I also headed up the platform committee for John Carey
a number of years ago. But I will tell you
that we haven't seen the energy, the enthusiasm, the momentum
(29:58):
like this for such a long time. Two thousand and
eight we experienced that. But this is palpable. Can I
give you not from the convention, but just personally before
I came here, I went to the dentist last week
and I just went to get my teeth cleaned. I'm
sitting in the chair and you can't talk or anything.
But I've got the dental hygienis who's just talking to
(30:19):
me and talking to me and talking to me about
how wonderful Kamala Harris is. We need to get people
out to vote. So I'm saying there is a sense
of momentum and energy that we haven't seen in a
long time.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
She raised five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 9 (30:34):
Yes, and she's united. I'll start with uniting the party.
United the party.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
So I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I have been on so many panels where white pundits
almost exclusively, men have said that she wasn't the choice,
they should skip her, they should you pick some other
group of white people. How many times she's incredible, She's
(31:01):
done better than anyone could have dreamed about any candidate.
Speaker 5 (31:05):
She was so underestimated.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And you've done this for such a long time, don't
do you feel I mean, it must feel like gratifying
to see how great she is, but also frustrating to see.
Speaker 9 (31:17):
How well you know, the fact is they're wrong. Yeah,
they're just absolutely wrong. Yeah, And you know, in some
ways it's a view that women are not up to
these jobs. And without question, she's up to this job.
And you know, and she's proving that every day and
the work that she also did her own background in
(31:37):
California as a prosecutor, as an attorney general. It's a
very accomplished women. But it is tougher for women. It's
tough for women in the House of Representatives. Women have
to work harder, yes, of course, and nobody hands you anything.
You have to fight for what you have and you
get it because of your competence, of your capacity, your credibility,
(32:00):
and someone who can get the job done, and that
is who Kamala Harris is and you know, so she's
been doing it. It's just that there's some people who
haven't recognized it. But so be it. They're wrong and
she is proving them wrong. You're a member who's known
for getting a lot done and being one of.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Those people who's like, you know, pushing legislation.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
And I've heard this from other members.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Pelosi is no longer the speaker, but we saw this
year her power. This talk to me about like women
congress power.
Speaker 9 (32:35):
Well, yes, I mean, look, first of all, keep in mind,
know when I went to the Congress, there were fourteen women.
We now have one hundred and fifty women. And it's
not the numbers, it's the agenda and how the agenda changes.
When I first came, you know, which is you know,
thirty years ago, women and minorities were not included in
the clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health. We
(32:55):
know that women are physiologically different than men, but all
studies were done on men extrapolated to women. Lo and behold,
we got together on a bipartisan basis, the women of
the Congress, and we pushed and we pushed, and now
there are women and minorities who are included in the
clinical trials. Look at the issues that we're dealing with today.
(33:19):
Pay equity, equal pay for equal work, is a paid
family and medical leave, childcare, paid sick days, and for me,
the Crown Jewel is a child tax credit. Earlier on,
we thought we were the crazy ants in the attic. No,
now they are the public discourse. At the center of
that public discourse. Are all of these issues brought to
(33:41):
the four by the women in the Congress in addition
to that, but we could rereach out in the legislative body.
You have to reach out to build a coalition and
that is men as well, that you pull in and
form the coalition to get the job done.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Is there still bipartisans going on in Congress?
Speaker 9 (34:01):
It's hard on some issues, you know there are and
members across the aisle can work together. Look, ranking member
of the Appropriations Committee, I've worked with Tom Cole you
know in the past Oklahoma, right and I chaired and
then he chaired the Labor, HHS, Health, Human Services and
Education Subcommittee. In the past there hadn't been an ability
(34:22):
to get that bill out of committee. Tom and I
work together. We have different views. We agreed on some
things disagreed, but we came to the compromise, which is
what you're supposed to do, and we passed appropriations bills
and we did that. I did that as chair two
years in succession. And you have to do that in
the bipartisan way because with those bills, if you don't,
(34:44):
the president doesn't sign.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
Government shuts down.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Right though Republicans did manage to shut down the government
once when they controlled.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
All three branches. That's right, which is not nothing.
Speaker 9 (34:56):
No, it shouldn't be, and it shouldn't be now, especially
with appropriations. You've got to come to a compromise. I
get some of the things I wanted, I don't get everything,
and that's the same. It's the same for you. Unfortunately,
we're in a period of time here where the House
majority with the Republicans, they have crafted appropriations bills that
(35:21):
not only can't they get Democratic support, they cannot get
Republican support. So when we go back in September, it's
going to be a pretty wild time. And they put
in all these policy writers that are just ugly poison pills,
and they do not belong in appropriations bills. Last go round,
we got rid of ninety nine percent of them will
(35:42):
do that.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Again, do you think, I mean, what happened to the
Republicans in the House.
Speaker 9 (35:47):
Well, you know, look, I think they've been captured by
a minority that's a very vocal minority that honestly did
not come to govern. They don't know how to govern,
and they can't govern, but they don't don't want to govern, right, No,
they don't.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
When you see these stuff that's in the state houses,
the Republican state houses, crazy crazy stuff, embryonic personhood, anti
LGBTQ stuff, does that stuff come.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Up to the federal government?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And when you have a Supreme Court that's so in
the tank for Republicans, how do you push against that?
Speaker 9 (36:23):
That view is alive? And well, I mean, this is
a full scale assault on women and women's rights. It
didn't end with Roe v.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
Wade.
Speaker 9 (36:33):
You know, that was a piece they've been They've been
plotting this for many years. They've now moved really to
restrict contraception and IVF. So again, as I say, it's
a full scale assault. And for me, what it portends
is that this is a lack of respect, a lack
(36:54):
of trust in women to make decisions on behalf of themselves.
And their families. Lane and simple, We're.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
Not going to roll it back. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Many.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Routin All represents District thirty two in the Colorado General Assembly.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Welcome to fast politics.
Speaker 10 (37:11):
Mann, that's right, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5 (37:14):
Mollett, tell us what you do, explain to us. You're
absolutely so.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
I'm Manny Routinelle. I'm a state representative for Colorado. I
represent the great people of Commerce City, which you know
is a community full of vibrant, generous people. Unfortunately, it
is one of the dirtiest districts, not just in the state,
but in the entire country. And that's a result of
industrial polluters that are trying to profit off of the
backs of people of color and working class families that
(37:38):
are in my neighborhoods. So my job before I was
a legislator was to be an environmental attorney to hold
corporate polluters accountable. So I'm bringing that fight into the
capital to hold those same corporate polluters accountable.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
You are a state rep in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
What can you do because you are at the state level,
what can you do to hold polluters accountable?
Speaker 6 (37:58):
Sure?
Speaker 10 (37:58):
So, because of the way the clean air at works
and so many other of our legislation headed from the
federal government down to the states. States actually have a
lot of control over how our environmental polluters are able
to function within our state, whether it's permitting decisions or
the types of regulations that they have to abide by.
And so we can pass all sorts of laws to
tighten regulations, make sure that if they do pollute when
(38:21):
they're not supposed to be, that those finds are appropriate
and cover the costs of remediation or covering the healthcare
costs of the people in the area.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
So you really can sue to get your people covered.
Speaker 10 (38:33):
So we create the laws, then our attorney friends can
take to sue.
Speaker 6 (38:37):
Yeah, and also agencies as well. Our agencies are able
to sue.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Is your governor aligned with those.
Speaker 10 (38:42):
Yes, So we've got Governor Jared Poulis and he has luckily.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
Been interviewed him. Oh great, he's.
Speaker 10 (38:49):
Done a great job. He's been championing these issues for
a long time. Of course, there's always more to do,
and I'm sure he's always there to help us get there.
You know, there's always frustrations when we have to I'm
supposed to be fighting on behalf of my people as
hard as I as I can, and he's got more
different communities to consider, so there's always a little bit
of attension there, but for the most part, he's been
(39:09):
a great ally on this fight.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
What do people need to know about your district and
about your fight?
Speaker 10 (39:15):
What they need to know is that my area is
an environmental justice community of Latinos, working class people, and
the reason why it's the most polluted area, not just
in the state but in the entire country is because
of these industrial polluters and also the way the highways
crisscross the area. What they need to know is that
these people are amazing. They're generous, they're kind, they're loving.
They want to have everything that every other American wants
(39:36):
to have. They want to have food on their table,
a roof over their heads, to hang out outside, playing
on the playground, whatever it is, and not get cancer.
And so these are folks just like you and me. Unfortunately,
they've been put in a really bad position by some
industrial polluters, and so it's important to hold them accountable.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
What does that look like, higher rates of cancer, higher
rates of asthma, nice carriages.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
What does that look like?
Speaker 10 (39:58):
You named so many of them pulary shoes of all kinds,
heart disease, you go down the list, and because of
the air and water concerns, you have all sorts of
issues that the community has to face. I've got kids
that have nose bleeds only in this area as opposed
to anywhere else. They've got asthma attacks when they're on
the playgrounds in this area more so than anywhere else.
So it's a really tough issue for quality of life.
(40:20):
It's a really tough issue for healthcare costs, and that's
all borne by this population as opposed to the corporate
polluters that are making these profits.
Speaker 5 (40:27):
Are any of the corporate polluters still polluting?
Speaker 10 (40:30):
Yeah, unfortunately, we do have a couple.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
Tell us who they are, bad actors?
Speaker 6 (40:34):
You want names, the details? Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
That's good. That's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 10 (40:39):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely yeah. So my area has the largest
oil refinery in the state. It's a company called Suncre,
and Suncre is actually headquartered or incorporated in Canada, and
so a lot of the profits that Suncre may have
goes to Canada. Now, unfortunately, Suncore as an oil refinery
built many, many, many, many decades ago, isn't in the
(41:01):
best shape and as a result, their systems fail, and
when their systems fail, pollution reeks havoc on our communities.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, so oil, refinery, suncore, what else is a bad
polluter in your neighborhood?
Speaker 10 (41:15):
You know, there's all sorts of industrial polluters that are
playing a role there that I think we need to
make sure.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
To industries if you don't want to name them, housements.
Speaker 10 (41:23):
All sorts of warehouses that are responsible for a lot
of transportation related emissions that I think we need to
electrify those industries as much as possible. So it's all
sorts of different polluters, and it's a really complex web. Unfortunately,
once an area becomes polluted, then you keep piling it
on and I think that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
So that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Is there anything you can do on the healthcare side
to help these people?
Speaker 10 (41:47):
Yeah, I mean there's all sorts of healthcare related things
that we can help cover. A big part of what
I think we need to be doing is in the
process of holding these corporations accountable, making sure that the
fines that we place on them are you use to
help the community.
Speaker 6 (42:01):
As much as possible.
Speaker 10 (42:02):
As being supposed to being shipped off to another part
of the state, and so that could be covering healthcare
costs that could be electrifying a lot of the transportation,
like the buses for instance, things of that nature. So
I think we can cover healthcare costs, or we can
cover a lot of the upstream causes of those healthcare costs.
And I think that's where I think a lot of
folks want to spend most of our time and resources.
Speaker 5 (42:24):
So interesting, so important. Thank you many, Thank.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
You so much.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
Molly, No momentuod.
Speaker 5 (42:32):
Do you have a moment of uckeray Rick Wilson, Yeah,
mor of fuckery.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
This week is, as we talked about a little bit earlier,
this sort of freakish double standard that Vice President Harris
and Tim Wallas are being held to on the matters
of policy and media access. Unless you're in Donald Trump's
sacred circle, you don't get media access to Donald Trump
in a real and meaningful way. What you get is
the Trump Show. You get the Donald Trump standing on
(42:55):
the stage, you know, like you just come off there
from helping paint thinner and just randomly fucking blurting out
lies that are rarely contemporariously fact checked, and rarely he
held to account as someone who is a guy who
incited a violent insurrection. He's rarely held to account as
a guy who overturned Roe v. Wade and brags about it.
(43:16):
And there's a sense of like, oh, well, Trump changes positions,
so we're just gonna treat that change of position as
if it's real. Yes, And with Harris, it's like I'm
starting to see coverage like in this case that she
tried in two thousand and one, it's there were questions
about whether or not the police handled the DNA evidence
properly in a related case. It's so fucking randomly, you know,
(43:39):
tangentially connected. They ignore the shit about Trump or I
get this and you know, you know you get this too,
for oh, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that about Trump.
That's all bigd in the cake. Don't worry about people
get Trump. They know it's just a lie. They know
he's lying. We don't have to report that he's lying
because they know that's not how this works. That's my
(44:01):
fockery and brought the media and here we are once again.
Speaker 5 (44:05):
And my moment of rockery.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
It's going to be close to yours, which is that
I'm actually going to talk about Tim Walls or I
am gonna Tim Walls. We saw a number of fake scandals.
Axios had something Axios reporter are and retweeted the editor
of the Washington Free Beacon. Let me tell you guys
a secret about the Washington Free Beacon that is not
a real newspaper.
Speaker 5 (44:26):
And Rick Wilson, I would.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Like you to take a minute to explain to listeners
what the Washington Free Beacon is.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Go the Free Bacon, the Daily Caller.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
But Free Beacon is literally funded by fancy Republicans as
an oppo dump machee.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
Well, and that's what the Daily Caller was funded by
Foster Freeze for generation. What those things exist to do?
Daily Caller and Free Bacon especially, they are the cheapest
way to pass a hit piece along. Okay, after I
Trump pissed off last week, they immediately sent whatever opa
bullshit to the Free Beacon, the Daily call or whatever
(45:01):
it is, and they're firing emails at us like only
to respond to something that happened in twenty twenty. Fuck
off their whole world. Their whole range of behavior is
to try to launder bullshit opo so that the New
York Times picks it up, or the Washington Post picks
it up, or that Politico picks it up. They post
these stories that are always structured in such a way
(45:23):
if you read them correctly, you can identify which oppo
researcher wrote the fucking thing for them.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yes, the Washington Free Beacon out a piece that said
Waltz boasted in nineteen ninety three he was named the
Outstanding Young Nebraska of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
Well, it turns.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Out what that means is that basically there was a
kind of typo and it had said, in fact, he
was the junior the outstanding young Nebraska. He was actually
the outstanding by the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce. And
this is a scandal which Alex Thompson from Axios has found.
Speaker 5 (46:03):
It was a typo.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
This is the kind of gotcha bullshit that these guys
just absolutely love, and they do it to launder it
so that the mainstream press will pick it up. And
they do it for well they did it before, for clicks.
Even though what you should know is Bridebart, Daily Call
or Free Beacon, National Review, Gayway Pundit all these things
(46:26):
in the right wing media sphere. They've been collapsing for
a long time in terms of their readership, and at
the moment, in the last set of com Score numbers,
all of them are falling off a cliff. I mean,
Magazine probably has more readers than the Free Beacon.
Speaker 5 (46:42):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
And look, you know they're working super hard because I'm
going to tell you a secret about Tim Walls.
Speaker 5 (46:48):
He's very popular.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
Yeah, they're going to have to really really up their
game if they want to try to take down Tim Walls.
And so far, see, they made the worst OPA mistake, right,
They made a fundamental opera mistake. Ma pros know. But
a lot of these people grew up in like the
Trump era, where we were in a particular lacuna in
our media and political history where a tweet or a
post on Gateway pundit could change an election, not a
(47:13):
good way. But they made an opera mistake. They should
have led up with the small shit. Okay, they should
have let up and said, oh, well, we'll start with
did he lie about this Chamber of Commerce thing? And
then find some of the little bullshit thing a little
and then you say, when they hit him with the
big one. There's a pattern of deceptive behavior on the
part of them, right, They're too impulsive and stupid to
do that kind of thing, and they just don't understand it.
(47:35):
And Harris has learned a trick, one that I've learned,
you know, painfully, is when those people in that particular
part of the Maggi ecosphere are going after you ignore them.
Learning walls could do in that case to help their
their case is to somehow go out and teres with outrage.
That's why Harris whenever somebody says Cambela colombabla, oh campbell
(47:58):
a dingdong, all that fucking bullshit they're doing, they desperately
want the Harris campaign to go, oh, dull, you must
pronounce your name, you up, regis scoundrel and stead They're
like the fuck out of here. Yeah, that is the
way to handle these people. You cannot give them the
attention that will help them elevate the story. You have
to just move on, kick ass, go past them.
Speaker 5 (48:21):
Exactly. That is right. Thank you, Rick Wilson, Thank you well.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
With John Fast, I will be seeing you tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics.
Speaker 5 (48:37):
Make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
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 discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And we are live from the DNC again with an
absolutely insane lineup of people who will tell you such
interesting things about what's going on in America.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Rep.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Don Bayer stops by to tell us why he's in
college at seventy four to leorre an Ai. Then we'll
talk to Caroline Glee, who's running for Mitt Romney's old
seat in Utah, and she'll tell us how we'll turn
that seat blue. Then we'll talk to Rep. Rose de
World about how VP Harris changes the game. Ben Many Routtinall,
who's a member of the Colorado General Assembly. We'll talk
about cleaning up one of the most polluted areas in America.
(00:38):
But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
the Link of Projects owned Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Welcome back, Few Fast Politics, My buddy Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Hello, Molly John Fast. We are both on the same
West coach right now.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
We are on our West Coast leg of our blockbuster tour.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Yes we are, and it is and folks, if you're
looking for information on our blockbuster tour. It's politics as unusual.
Dot bio bio move quickly because to our surprise, people
actually want to hear us do our hi juice and
for volity on stage, and it's selling out fast. I'm
very importned by that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you're listening to this and you're in San Francisco,
because this comes out tomorrow, you can come tonight and
listen to us in San Francisco. There are tickets. Look
on our social media. We both have been tweeting about it, We've.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Been reading about it. People were sick of us.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I think there are very few tickets, but there certainly
are one or two. On Tuesday, we are in Los Angeles,
and a few tickets left for that too, we think,
though who knows, but check it out. So Rick Wilson,
we are gonna do two seconds sort of wrap up
on the convention, and then we have a lot of other.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Stuff to talk about.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
But I do think it's important to talk about the
convention because even though we were both there, so we
have been like living in I want you to talk
about this because you have so much more experience with
this and have been at so many conventions and also
on the wrong side of No.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
I was at a couple of Democratic conventions on the
spin team for the Republicans.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah no, no, that's why I say on the wrong
side of it, but I thought so as a partisan
on the opinion side, it felt to me like, I mean,
maybe the speeches could have been a little shorter, but
ultimately it could not have gone any better.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Well, speaking of speeches being the right length, the fact
that Vice President Harris delivered a thirty eight minute speech
instead of a ninety two minute speech, it makes it difference.
I mean, Dorobald Trump on his acceptance speech and I
couldn't remember a single detail from it other than me, me, me.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
And how long did Harris speak?
Speaker 4 (02:46):
For thirty eight it was perfect. It was right on
the money, and people need to remember we live in
a shorter attention span world than most speech writers myself
including grew up. Yet Right always makes the key mistake
in his speeches of going full cast going for like
its for the audience starts to suffer from dehydration.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah no, I definitely he goes bolcastro. I would almost
say he goes full Mussolini.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
It is rather Mussolini asked. But look, I will say
this about this convention. Molly, as an observer of these things,
is an attendee of many of these things. The only
people who were complaining at this convention were the media
and Obo, who.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm very conflicted because I am a member of the
mainstream media, and I also know how imboardant the mainstream
media is to democracy, and I do think that the
DNC did not treat them with the kind of reverence
that perhaps they are used to. I also feel like
the mainstream media has been equally virulent towards anti democracy
(03:48):
and we want to give free breakfast.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
The attitude by some folks in the press that was,
you know, she won't sit down for a four hour interview,
she won't do this, she won't do that. I guess
somebod that was taking it out on her for that.
But this is not a campaign, Molly, with two normal candidates.
It's a campaign with one guy who is compactive, detached,
realery and.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Also wants to end American democracy. Like he's crazy. But
he was crazy in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Now he's ready to end the American experiment and his
people are with him.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
They are.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
And my take on the speech itself was it was
one of the most important speeches in modern political history.
She in thirty eight minutes, managed to illustrate the stakes
for the country, diminish and condemn Trump in the appropriate way,
and to show a new way forward for the Democratic
Party on how to run and win and how to
expand with coalition. You know, there are a lot of
(04:41):
my former you know, Republicans and fellow you never Trumpers.
During that speech, all of our chats were burning up, like,
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this
is amazing. And it really spoke to me that a
lot of the sort of gentry Republicans who are, oh,
I don't like Trump's greets, but I do like his policy.
A lot of those people were the most outraged by
(05:04):
the speech. How dare she talk about freedom? How dares
she talk about strength? That's not her had a very
stoppy foot kind of piece in the journal about it,
which tells you it was effective, which tells you it
was the right way.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
To approach it.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
So look, I think that I think the convention, in
terms of its optics, in terms of its composition of
the speakers, including a lot of former Republicans who are
voting Democratic now, really sends a signal to the country.
They did not fall into what I call the Benetton
trap of the Democratic Party, which for years has been
sort of every single interest group has to have all
(05:42):
of its things on the stage all the time. And
by showing America that you can be a Democrat and
be patriotic, that you can shout USA, USA, or you
can wave an American flag and not feel like MAGA
owns it. That's a really important message coming out of
this because the ownership in the culture of the symbols
and signifiers of American history and American political life are
(06:05):
things that people love. If all of the Republicans use them,
fly them, talk about them, you know, it goes back
to the old white, pale Pastel's problem for the Democrats,
and they've gotten away from it at long last. And
I think it has had an enormously powerful effect on
where the ticket is right now, where the campaign is
right now.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I also think that when you watch, it's pretty interesting
to watch these Republicans get mad about it when they
gave it away. Donald Trump gave away patriotism. Yeah, he
ran on America's lescape. He ran on you know, suckers
and losers as I mean, you know, as much as
he backed away from it, he also ran on it
American isolationism.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
That was how he got here.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So you know, I'm not conflicted, but I do think
that speech was not a speech for the Democratic base,
which makes sense because you know, she's trying to win
a general election here and you saw some people that
were on the far left were mad about some of
the elements in it. But here's the fundamental problem, and
it's what is currently sinking Donald Trump. And it's a
(07:08):
problem for all political candidates, which is you have to
appeal to your base but then grow your electorate. And
Donald Trump is just you know, in twenty sixteen, somehow
he managed to sneak it through the you know, sort
of win by just embracing his base and saying fuck
you to everyone else. And now you can't keep winning
(07:30):
elections like that, and that is where Donald Trump is
stuck in. I mean, I think a really interesting thing
that we saw today, which just spoke to me, was
in playbook this morning.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Right, Donald Trump is now pivoted to be pro choice.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
The Donald Trump truth the other day of my administration
be great for women's rights.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I'm like women's reproductives, great ups what.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
What Yeah, that was incredible. So they had Lyla Rose.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Who was the founder of the anti abortion group Live Action.
Complete lunatic only is it not principled. It's not going
to help Trump campaign to be trying to sound like
a Democrat.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Right now, yesterday and.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
The day before, Donald Trump has been on truth social NonStop.
He has been flailing around NonStop. Now having been on
the road now for a couple of weeks. The things
I've been hearing out of the Trump world. There was
a senior Trump person who's a meaningful part of their
campaign who actually took three days off last week. And really,
I'm off in Trump World right now when the building
(08:29):
is on fire and the occupant is spreading gas around
it everywhere. I mean, this thing is teetering, and I
don't want people to get cocky, and I want people
to overestimate where we are. It will still be a
brutal race, guys. There are still a lot of money
that will come out for him in the end. There's
still a lot of fuckery occurring. A lot of them
are counting on corruption in election offices like in Georgia
(08:52):
and elsewhere to pull out a fake win in the end.
So I don't want people to be complacent, but right now,
everything they've thrown at Harrison Walls has failed. Everything they've
tried the new to reset Trump has failed. Everything they've
tried to do to rebuild his momentum has failed. You know,
on Friday, when Tony Fabrizio, his polster, Toney the pollster,
(09:14):
came out with that poll that made you know, even
the guys at Rasmus and go, whoa easy their pal
So seven points in Arizona. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's where
it is. But when you see them trying to manage
him that way, and you see him able to control
his impulses and his statements and trying to spend things
(09:35):
that are unspinnable, and trying to get back the mojo
he had in sixteen on social media where he could
tweet something and then the Clinton campaign would respond with
like a fourteen page memo about the tweet. People would
be freaked out and it would be the top of
the news and all that other shit. But look, he's
also facing up some stuff that he is really really
going to break him. The Federal Reserve is going to
(09:56):
cut rates, Gas prices at the barrel are plunged, right now.
The reason you're paying a lot for gas is not
because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It's because gas
prices up the barrelhead have been low, and gas companies
have been working. You. We're such a low point that
they're gonna have to that they're going to cut prices significantly.
You're going to end up at the by the rest
(10:16):
of the whatever's left of the summer and end of
the fall, with inflation going down, your rates going down,
and gas going down. You just took away one of
the underlying predicates of Donald Trump's.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Campaign, right right, No, no, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So let's talk about RFK because Jesse wants us to
talk about RFK.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
I want to never talk about RFK.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
How did RFK get locked in that room with five
rabbit wolves? Man?
Speaker 6 (10:39):
That was really word.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
The wolves struck back.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But no, it's not funny to talk about terrible things
happening to people, you know.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
But let's talk about RFK for a minute.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
RFK has i supposedly and again we are talking about
things that RFK has self reported, So take all of
this with a grain of salt. But he said that
he had wanted to meet with Harris, and she had refused.
I think that is a good call on her part
if true.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Do you know why she refused because she's a lawyer. Yeah,
she knew that what he was doing was say, I
want to meet with you to fight, figure out what
position you'll give me when I quit.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Now, look, I am not one of those people who
thinks that Donald Trump is going to get indicted on
whatever statutory restriction that comes under by the time the
election rolls around. But I should just remind you he
does not mind.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Criming, right right, No, No, he's a good trade of criming.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And also he never gets held accountable, unlike Harris, who does.
Because if there's one thing we've learned in Trump's America,
so Trump can get away with anything and no one
else can, not even his people.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Molly, Can I just say something about that? That's the
double standard that I have. You know, it's not just
both sides in them, Okay, Right, It's like, why hasn't
Vice President Harris produced a nine hundred page plan on
climate change or a page plan on healthcare or whatever
it is. Why won't she personally brief us on every
detail on page forty seven of the Climate and Donald
(12:08):
Trump goes out and says, I'm going to throw my
shit all over the place like a monkey in a zoo,
and they go, oh, yes, Well, Trump's policies are very
clearly understood by the voters, and I mean right.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
But look, there's quite a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yes, but Jesse really wants us to talk about what
OURFK Junior are leaving the race means. And the reality
is people will tell you a lot of bullshit, but
nobody really knows right. So on Friday, someone very smart
politically said to me, oh, it's going to hurt her.
But then this weekend I saw some poll ling and
writing that said, actually, it may not do anything. So
(12:44):
the reality is we don't really know what it's going
to do. It could hurt her, it could not hurt her.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
If RFK Junior was a beloved son of the Kennedy family,
a symbolic through line of the legacy of the Kennedys
RFK and JFK, it would be something. But what we
saw from RFK as he unwound this campaign, Let's not
forget he was put in the campaign because Bannon and
(13:12):
Stone and Tucker and others said, if you do this,
it'll fuck Joe Biden. There's a core paper trail on that.
During the course of his campaign, he was talking to
a group of people who are Trump voters to some degree,
the conspiracy nuts. But he was also trying to maintain
this I'm the do good or independent bullshit, which was
(13:33):
awkward and false all the time, but none of it
was really working at scale. Right.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
He was doing better before he started campaign.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
He was doing better before people started knowing that he
was RFK junior. While the dead bear and the falconry
and the drugs and all the other weird shit, while
those things were all sort of background noise to it,
I don't think people hadn't fully internalized that this guy
is pro polio. This guy is truly a dark bad guy.
(14:04):
And when I see his polio folks, he doesn't just
oppose MNRA vaccines. He opposes all vaccines.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Yes he does.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
If you worked to kidd an iron lung of Republican Barbaria,
probably have you noticed how much the magas are trying
to make RFK a thing. It's all che everything's different now,
the whole election has been turned right down. We went
and get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I think That's a really important point too, is that
Republicans keep saying like this is a game changer, and
this change is in the election that but ultimately we
don't really know what it does.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
We have some initial brush fire stuff on it. We're
not really seeing this as changing the ballgame because a
lot of RFK voters, it turns out, are in states
where the decisions already made. We know how that state's
could already go. They're not as prevalent as a percentage
of the voting population in a lot of the swing
states as they are in a few places where he's
(15:00):
much more popular. And look, all of the panic over RFK,
I think is going to fade in comparison to the
fact that RFK said Trump wants me to meet his
running mate Donald Trump. Literally you tweeted a thing about
calling the two of them that ticket. If I were Jadvan,
I'd get a food taster, some level four body armor,
and I'd up my security procedures.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Do we think that Trump?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I mean, obviously the ballots are already No.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
No, they're mostly printed. Oh, by the way, that's the
other part of this. RFK is going to come off
the ballot in a lot of states. He's going to
stay on the ballot in a lot of states too,
And if he stays on the ballot, that's no good
for Trump. He doesn't get to like at the end
of it, I'm giving my votes to Trump after the
election's over. That's not how any of this works.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Yeah, good point, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
We have even more toward dates for you. Did you
know the linked projects, Rick Wilson have Fast Politics, Bolli
jug Faster heading out on towur to bring you night
of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on
August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall,
or in la on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater.
Then we're headed to the Midwest and we'll be at
the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September,
(16:14):
and on the twenty second we'll be in Chicago at
City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast.
On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at
the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be Infilliate
City Winery, and then DC on the second at the
Miracle Theater and today. We just announced that we'll be
in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery.
If you need to laugh as we get through this
election and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives
(16:36):
in a golf club again, we got you covered. Join
us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead
of cry your way through this election season and give
you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now.
Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual
dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio. Don Buyer
represents Virginia's eighth district.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Welcome too, Fast, Congressman Don Bayer, John Fast.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
It's very exciting to have you.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
You are the luckiest congressman because you do have just
a crazy commute to work, right.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
It's a crazy commute. And more members of Congress, the staffs,
the retired members, a more peace scorps volunteers, more generals.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
That it's a very politics is our cottage industry?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Oh wow, that's something, So let's talk about You wanted
to understand AI, so you went back to college.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
What does that explain?
Speaker 7 (17:31):
Well, I wanted to understand it for a long time
because I was just fascinated with the idea that we're
generating so much information that we can't sort through. We
can't see the connections, whether they are causation or correlation,
we just don't see them at all. And I tried
to do it on Coursera, Yeah, but I didn't have
enough math background to succeed.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
So a couple of years ago, all of us.
Speaker 7 (17:51):
Three years ago, I went back to our local university,
George Mason University, and started taking the prerequisites for a
graduate program.
Speaker 6 (17:58):
In machine learning.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
How was that?
Speaker 6 (18:01):
It's fun? I'm not even halfway through sixteen.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
You'll literally go, you're really doing that?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
Next Monday I start my course on data structures and
I have to drive out to Fairfax Monday and Wednesday.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Drives my congressional schedule crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
So here's my question for you.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
One of the ways in which Congress is criticized is
that a lot of people say this, including myself, not
that I don't love you guys, but there's not enough
tech regulation. And some of it is because a lot
of members don't understand technology. Now, you obviously taking an
AI course. You know you're doing an AI graduate program,
so you obviously understand it better than probably ninety nine
(18:40):
percent of Americans, let alone members of Congress. But is
that true and why is there so little tech regulation?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
Well, the classic case, Molly is social media were the
only thing we'd done in twenty five years to say
we can't soothe them, right. We gave them immunity for lawsuits,
which is crazy. So we're trying not to make that
mistake again. The various AI task forces up there, the
most important one was appointed by the current Speaker and
by HACKEM Jefferies, twelve Democrats, twelve Republicans.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
So trying to put together.
Speaker 7 (19:09):
A meaningful set of legislative initiatives like next month, you know,
but we should report by the end of September, hopefully
pass a bunch by the end of this year.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
Wow. So we're trying to get ahead.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
It's naive to think we'll ever be ahead of the
American public, but we're trying not.
Speaker 6 (19:24):
To make the same social media mistake.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I hate to hold Europe up as an example here,
but they've done a better job with regulating social media
and it's made a lot of big tech companies very mad,
which is probably a good sign. Do you think something
like that could happen here.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
I do you know Europe has already passed an AI
Act while the EUAI Act, and they worked really hard
on it.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
I met with them half a dozen times.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
It's generally perceived by most people in America, including the
AI companies, as being too prescriptive.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Of course, too legislative. You got to sign up for licensing.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
You don't like any legislation. That's why they think it's
too legislating.
Speaker 7 (20:01):
And you know, but we're getting all the creativity and
inventiveness and stuff out of America, so we're trying to
do light touch. We're trying to address not regulation for
regulation's sake, but rather where there's a downside. For example,
think deep fakes, think the challenges with child sexual assault material,
the way people are using AI to trash their boyfriends
or their girlfriends that dumped them, things like that.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
So, as someone who comes from journalism, we made a
lot of free content for tech companies.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
They used it and.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Basically destroyed all the media companies by using our free content.
I mean, is there anything prescriptive that Congress could pass?
Speaker 6 (20:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (20:38):
You know, they've started talking mally year ago about or
two years ago about watermarking. But it has to go
much deeper than that, because right now, if you're a
photographer and illustrator, when all that stuff gets loaded into
one of the big engines, anybody can create something without
ever needing an all illustrator or a photographer.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
Again, the same thing with.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
Poets with music, right with books, Yeah, you publish a
book right now, two or three days later, some version
of that has been generated by AIH and as being marketed.
So there's a lot more to go to protect intellectual property.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yeah, And do you think that can happen?
Speaker 7 (21:09):
I think it has to happen Otherwise who's going to
create content if you take away all the monetary centers?
For example, I know the motion picture industry is terrified,
right about what.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
Something like that?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
That really does seem like an important thing. Do you
think there's a bipartisan appetite.
Speaker 7 (21:24):
For that, Yeah, Molly, the good is so far it's
very bipartisan. The twenty four people of jayobernoltire Republican from California,
tedlu a Democrat from California, lead the effort, and then
they've worked hard to try to make sure that that
stayed together. I think once one of the big challenges
out there right now is the idea of trying to
create some kind of long term digital idea that belongs
(21:48):
to Molly jong Fast or Don Bayer, that we'll get
away from all the identity theft. That's the only place
I've seen Republican pushback because they begin to think world
government or I know, the government's going to know too.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Much about songs in women's medical offices.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
But nowhere else, nowhere else, Yes, in the bedroom.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
By the way, are you you have been doing this
for a while, although also ambassadorships, et cetera. Are you
surprised at how far right the Republican Party has gone?
Speaker 7 (22:19):
It's nowhere near the Republican Party that I knew. I
starved eight years in the Virginia Senate. Completely different.
Speaker 6 (22:25):
Yeah than this.
Speaker 7 (22:25):
I mean, we used to work together all the time.
You can never predict how the vote was going to
turn out here. You know it'll be two eighteen to
two fourteen. Almost every time it was contested.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That no fault divorce thing, Republicans are very passionate about
repealing no fault divorce signed into law by Ronald Reagan
in California, discuss there's.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
So many things that they're talking about.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
You know, there are the restrictions on contraception IVF personhood
at you know, when the sperm hits the ovum.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Yeah, that are that are just way out of the mainstream.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
I just think about when you divorced, when somebody had
to be wrong, somebody had to do something really evil
to do it. So many people were victimized, thrown under
the bus, and or families were forced to stay together that.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
Were really bad for them and bad for the children. Yeah,
and certainly repressed women's.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, all it's right. Yeah, thank you so much, Congressman.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
Yeah, thank you, Molly good luck.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so are we,
which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
we have just released the final episode of this five
(23:41):
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly Jong
Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you
are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
you can hit play and put your phone in the
lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
We need to educate.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
to this country. So please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Caroline Gleek is a candidate for Senate in Utah.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Caroline, who is running for the
Mint Romney Senate seat in the great state of Utah.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
That is correct. How are you going to do it?
Speaker 8 (24:26):
We are going to get young voters to turn out,
to get women to turn out, and you know, when
young voters and women turn out, we win.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So Utah start a state in the Democrats talk about
that much.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
Tell us what you could do in Utah.
Speaker 8 (24:40):
Utah isn't to state that the Democratic parties really had
their radar on, and I think that is a mistake
because Utah is already a lot more purple than it seems.
And in our last presidential election, young LDS voters increasingly
voted Democratic.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
Interesting, Yes, and we were really.
Speaker 8 (24:56):
Encouraged also by the results of Nikki Haley really reject Trump.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Yeah, and yeah, it's already a lot more purple.
Speaker 8 (25:04):
Fifty three percent of voters in Utah are registered Republican
and then a lot of those low are Democrats that
file that registered Republican to vote in the closed primaries.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
So yeah, Donald Trump has been really alienated the LDS community.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 1 (25:20):
He still was able to get Mike Lee, but it
was real sacrilege.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
Can you talk about that? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (25:27):
Utah voters, we are you know, we have a global perspective, right,
We're really tolerant of immigrants, right, and we're warm, inclusive people.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:35):
And the Trump agenda, his rhetoric, his status as a
convicted felon, the way he openly brags about assaulting women,
it's not who we are as Utah's right.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:47):
So Utah voters, in our hearts, we are a really
warm and inclusive people, global perspective, and we're really ready
to make some big democratic gains in the state.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
What is your race looking like? Who is your opponent?
Tell us a little bit.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
Yes, Yes, I won the Democratic Convention with ninety three
percent of the votes, so I'll be on the ballot
in November.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
And my opponent is a career politician.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
He's currently serving in the House of Representatives, so he's
running to serve in the Senate.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
Now.
Speaker 8 (26:19):
And he's a really interesting guy. He's very nice, very charismatic.
I've worked with him a lot in my role as
a citizen and climate activist in Congress.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
He talks a big game about what he's.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
Going to do for environment, for climate, but when he
gets into Congress he actually has a worse environmental voting
record than Mike Lee.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (26:36):
Yes, he's the founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, yet
he's consistently voted to undermine protections for aaron water.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
He's a greenwasher.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Why do you think that the Republicans can't get interested
in climate?
Speaker 8 (26:49):
Just like anything in politics, we have to change the
role that big money plays. Yeah, but when you look
at who is funding their campaigns, you see how they
have to vote. And he is one of the top
recipients from the fossil fuel industry in Congress, and the
top recipient from our electric utility provider. So you follow
(27:09):
the money and then you see how they vote.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
What does climate change look like into Utah?
Speaker 8 (27:13):
First and foremost, we have a huge impact to our
public health from the air quality. The average uton dies
on average two years early because of the air quality.
During these periods of poor air quality, we see an
increased a sixteen percent increased rate of miscarriages. We see
cardiac events, mental health challenges asthma. So we get really
(27:34):
bad air from the burning of fossil fuels and the
way it gets kind of trapped in our Teacup Valley
where most of the population of Utah lives. And then
we've been seeing unprecedented wildfire seasons. We have been seeing
so many days of record breaking heat. Just we used
to have only a few days over one hundred degrees
and now we have these really long stretches, and our
(27:56):
population that's experiencing homelessness, which has also been in crazy.
They're dying of the heat.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
Tourists are dying of heat in the national parks.
Speaker 8 (28:04):
And then in the winter we're seeing more snow that's
falling as rain, which is a big problem for our
ski industry and the snowsports economy, which is a major
major part of our economy there. Yeah, so those are
just some of the impacts, but we expect to see
a lot worse wildfires, flooding, and other public health impacts.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Yeah. So interesting and also so upsetting. How it is.
Can people find out more about you?
Speaker 8 (28:28):
They can go to our website Caroline for Utah dot
com c A R O L I N E FO
r Utah dot com. If you can, you can chip
in a couple bucks. You can do that from any
state in the nation. Any American citizen can chip in
and it would really go a long way to ensuring
we can run the most competitive campaign. And then if
you want to sign up to volunteer, we can also
(28:48):
have postcard and phone banking opportunities around the nation and
we would really appreciate it because every Senate state counts
and we can't turn our back on the investments into
these states because we are going take Utah and make
it into blue Talk.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
Thank you, Caroline.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Rose. The world represents Connecticut's third district.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
I'm so excited to have you. Welcome to Congress. Woman.
Thank you. You have done this for a while.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
You have been to a few conventions I have you
have been, you know, one of the really important members
who's gotten a ton done progressive legislation. You're just sort
of a beloved member of Congress. What does it feel
like to be in this Hairess convention?
Speaker 5 (29:35):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 9 (29:36):
First of all, thank you for the kind words as well.
I love what I do. I'm blessed to be able
to serve in the House of Representatives. But I have
been to a number of conventions since nineteen eighty four.
I also headed up the platform committee for John Carey
a number of years ago. But I will tell you
that we haven't seen the energy, the enthusiasm, the momentum
(29:58):
like this for such a long time. Two thousand and
eight we experienced that. But this is palpable. Can I
give you not from the convention, but just personally before
I came here, I went to the dentist last week
and I just went to get my teeth cleaned. I'm
sitting in the chair and you can't talk or anything.
But I've got the dental hygienis who's just talking to
(30:19):
me and talking to me and talking to me about
how wonderful Kamala Harris is. We need to get people
out to vote. So I'm saying there is a sense
of momentum and energy that we haven't seen in a
long time.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
She raised five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 9 (30:34):
Yes, and she's united. I'll start with uniting the party.
United the party.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
So I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I have been on so many panels where white pundits
almost exclusively, men have said that she wasn't the choice,
they should skip her, they should you pick some other
group of white people. How many times she's incredible, She's
(31:01):
done better than anyone could have dreamed about any candidate.
Speaker 5 (31:05):
She was so underestimated.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And you've done this for such a long time, don't
do you feel I mean, it must feel like gratifying
to see how great she is, but also frustrating to see.
Speaker 9 (31:17):
How well you know, the fact is they're wrong. Yeah,
they're just absolutely wrong. Yeah, And you know, in some
ways it's a view that women are not up to
these jobs. And without question, she's up to this job.
And you know, and she's proving that every day and
the work that she also did her own background in
(31:37):
California as a prosecutor, as an attorney general. It's a
very accomplished women. But it is tougher for women. It's
tough for women in the House of Representatives. Women have
to work harder, yes, of course, and nobody hands you anything.
You have to fight for what you have and you
get it because of your competence, of your capacity, your credibility,
(32:00):
and someone who can get the job done, and that
is who Kamala Harris is and you know, so she's
been doing it. It's just that there's some people who
haven't recognized it. But so be it. They're wrong and
she is proving them wrong. You're a member who's known
for getting a lot done and being one of.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Those people who's like, you know, pushing legislation.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
And I've heard this from other members.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Pelosi is no longer the speaker, but we saw this
year her power. This talk to me about like women
congress power.
Speaker 9 (32:35):
Well, yes, I mean, look, first of all, keep in mind,
know when I went to the Congress, there were fourteen women.
We now have one hundred and fifty women. And it's
not the numbers, it's the agenda and how the agenda changes.
When I first came, you know, which is you know,
thirty years ago, women and minorities were not included in
the clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health. We
(32:55):
know that women are physiologically different than men, but all
studies were done on men extrapolated to women. Lo and behold,
we got together on a bipartisan basis, the women of
the Congress, and we pushed and we pushed, and now
there are women and minorities who are included in the
clinical trials. Look at the issues that we're dealing with today.
(33:19):
Pay equity, equal pay for equal work, is a paid
family and medical leave, childcare, paid sick days, and for me,
the Crown Jewel is a child tax credit. Earlier on,
we thought we were the crazy ants in the attic. No,
now they are the public discourse. At the center of
that public discourse. Are all of these issues brought to
(33:41):
the four by the women in the Congress in addition
to that, but we could rereach out in the legislative body.
You have to reach out to build a coalition and
that is men as well, that you pull in and
form the coalition to get the job done.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Is there still bipartisans going on in Congress?
Speaker 9 (34:01):
It's hard on some issues, you know there are and
members across the aisle can work together. Look, ranking member
of the Appropriations Committee, I've worked with Tom Cole you
know in the past Oklahoma, right and I chaired and
then he chaired the Labor, HHS, Health, Human Services and
Education Subcommittee. In the past there hadn't been an ability
(34:22):
to get that bill out of committee. Tom and I
work together. We have different views. We agreed on some
things disagreed, but we came to the compromise, which is
what you're supposed to do, and we passed appropriations bills
and we did that. I did that as chair two
years in succession. And you have to do that in
the bipartisan way because with those bills, if you don't,
(34:44):
the president doesn't sign.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
Government shuts down.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Right though Republicans did manage to shut down the government
once when they controlled.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
All three branches. That's right, which is not nothing.
Speaker 9 (34:56):
No, it shouldn't be, and it shouldn't be now, especially
with appropriations. You've got to come to a compromise. I
get some of the things I wanted, I don't get everything,
and that's the same. It's the same for you. Unfortunately,
we're in a period of time here where the House
majority with the Republicans, they have crafted appropriations bills that
(35:21):
not only can't they get Democratic support, they cannot get
Republican support. So when we go back in September, it's
going to be a pretty wild time. And they put
in all these policy writers that are just ugly poison pills,
and they do not belong in appropriations bills. Last go round,
we got rid of ninety nine percent of them will
(35:42):
do that.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Again, do you think, I mean, what happened to the
Republicans in the House.
Speaker 9 (35:47):
Well, you know, look, I think they've been captured by
a minority that's a very vocal minority that honestly did
not come to govern. They don't know how to govern,
and they can't govern, but they don't don't want to govern, right, No,
they don't.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
When you see these stuff that's in the state houses,
the Republican state houses, crazy crazy stuff, embryonic personhood, anti
LGBTQ stuff, does that stuff come.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Up to the federal government?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And when you have a Supreme Court that's so in
the tank for Republicans, how do you push against that?
Speaker 9 (36:23):
That view is alive? And well, I mean, this is
a full scale assault on women and women's rights. It
didn't end with Roe v.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
Wade.
Speaker 9 (36:33):
You know, that was a piece they've been They've been
plotting this for many years. They've now moved really to
restrict contraception and IVF. So again, as I say, it's
a full scale assault. And for me, what it portends
is that this is a lack of respect, a lack
(36:54):
of trust in women to make decisions on behalf of themselves.
And their families. Lane and simple, We're.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
Not going to roll it back. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Many.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Routin All represents District thirty two in the Colorado General Assembly.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Welcome to fast politics.
Speaker 10 (37:11):
Mann, that's right, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5 (37:14):
Mollett, tell us what you do, explain to us. You're
absolutely so.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
I'm Manny Routinelle. I'm a state representative for Colorado. I
represent the great people of Commerce City, which you know
is a community full of vibrant, generous people. Unfortunately, it
is one of the dirtiest districts, not just in the state,
but in the entire country. And that's a result of
industrial polluters that are trying to profit off of the
backs of people of color and working class families that
(37:38):
are in my neighborhoods. So my job before I was
a legislator was to be an environmental attorney to hold
corporate polluters accountable. So I'm bringing that fight into the
capital to hold those same corporate polluters accountable.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
You are a state rep in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
What can you do because you are at the state level,
what can you do to hold polluters accountable?
Speaker 6 (37:58):
Sure?
Speaker 10 (37:58):
So, because of the way the clean air at works
and so many other of our legislation headed from the
federal government down to the states. States actually have a
lot of control over how our environmental polluters are able
to function within our state, whether it's permitting decisions or
the types of regulations that they have to abide by.
And so we can pass all sorts of laws to
tighten regulations, make sure that if they do pollute when
(38:21):
they're not supposed to be, that those finds are appropriate
and cover the costs of remediation or covering the healthcare
costs of the people in the area.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
So you really can sue to get your people covered.
Speaker 10 (38:33):
So we create the laws, then our attorney friends can
take to sue.
Speaker 6 (38:37):
Yeah, and also agencies as well. Our agencies are able
to sue.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Is your governor aligned with those.
Speaker 10 (38:42):
Yes, So we've got Governor Jared Poulis and he has luckily.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
Been interviewed him. Oh great, he's.
Speaker 10 (38:49):
Done a great job. He's been championing these issues for
a long time. Of course, there's always more to do,
and I'm sure he's always there to help us get there.
You know, there's always frustrations when we have to I'm
supposed to be fighting on behalf of my people as
hard as I as I can, and he's got more
different communities to consider, so there's always a little bit
of attension there, but for the most part, he's been
(39:09):
a great ally on this fight.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
What do people need to know about your district and
about your fight?
Speaker 10 (39:15):
What they need to know is that my area is
an environmental justice community of Latinos, working class people, and
the reason why it's the most polluted area, not just
in the state but in the entire country is because
of these industrial polluters and also the way the highways
crisscross the area. What they need to know is that
these people are amazing. They're generous, they're kind, they're loving.
They want to have everything that every other American wants
(39:36):
to have. They want to have food on their table,
a roof over their heads, to hang out outside, playing
on the playground, whatever it is, and not get cancer.
And so these are folks just like you and me. Unfortunately,
they've been put in a really bad position by some
industrial polluters, and so it's important to hold them accountable.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
What does that look like, higher rates of cancer, higher
rates of asthma, nice carriages.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
What does that look like?
Speaker 10 (39:58):
You named so many of them pulary shoes of all kinds,
heart disease, you go down the list, and because of
the air and water concerns, you have all sorts of
issues that the community has to face. I've got kids
that have nose bleeds only in this area as opposed
to anywhere else. They've got asthma attacks when they're on
the playgrounds in this area more so than anywhere else.
So it's a really tough issue for quality of life.
(40:20):
It's a really tough issue for healthcare costs, and that's
all borne by this population as opposed to the corporate
polluters that are making these profits.
Speaker 5 (40:27):
Are any of the corporate polluters still polluting?
Speaker 10 (40:30):
Yeah, unfortunately, we do have a couple.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
Tell us who they are, bad actors?
Speaker 6 (40:34):
You want names, the details? Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
That's good. That's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 10 (40:39):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely yeah. So my area has the largest
oil refinery in the state. It's a company called Suncre,
and Suncre is actually headquartered or incorporated in Canada, and
so a lot of the profits that Suncre may have
goes to Canada. Now, unfortunately, Suncore as an oil refinery
built many, many, many, many decades ago, isn't in the
(41:01):
best shape and as a result, their systems fail, and
when their systems fail, pollution reeks havoc on our communities.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, so oil, refinery, suncore, what else is a bad
polluter in your neighborhood?
Speaker 10 (41:15):
You know, there's all sorts of industrial polluters that are
playing a role there that I think we need to
make sure.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
To industries if you don't want to name them, housements.
Speaker 10 (41:23):
All sorts of warehouses that are responsible for a lot
of transportation related emissions that I think we need to
electrify those industries as much as possible. So it's all
sorts of different polluters, and it's a really complex web. Unfortunately,
once an area becomes polluted, then you keep piling it
on and I think that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
So that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Is there anything you can do on the healthcare side
to help these people?
Speaker 10 (41:47):
Yeah, I mean there's all sorts of healthcare related things
that we can help cover. A big part of what
I think we need to be doing is in the
process of holding these corporations accountable, making sure that the
fines that we place on them are you use to
help the community.
Speaker 6 (42:01):
As much as possible.
Speaker 10 (42:02):
As being supposed to being shipped off to another part
of the state, and so that could be covering healthcare
costs that could be electrifying a lot of the transportation,
like the buses for instance, things of that nature. So
I think we can cover healthcare costs, or we can
cover a lot of the upstream causes of those healthcare costs.
And I think that's where I think a lot of
folks want to spend most of our time and resources.
Speaker 5 (42:24):
So interesting, so important. Thank you many, Thank.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
You so much.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
Molly, No momentuod.
Speaker 5 (42:32):
Do you have a moment of uckeray Rick Wilson, Yeah,
mor of fuckery.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
This week is, as we talked about a little bit earlier,
this sort of freakish double standard that Vice President Harris
and Tim Wallas are being held to on the matters
of policy and media access. Unless you're in Donald Trump's
sacred circle, you don't get media access to Donald Trump
in a real and meaningful way. What you get is
the Trump Show. You get the Donald Trump standing on
(42:55):
the stage, you know, like you just come off there
from helping paint thinner and just randomly fucking blurting out
lies that are rarely contemporariously fact checked, and rarely he
held to account as someone who is a guy who
incited a violent insurrection. He's rarely held to account as
a guy who overturned Roe v. Wade and brags about it.
(43:16):
And there's a sense of like, oh, well, Trump changes positions,
so we're just gonna treat that change of position as
if it's real. Yes, And with Harris, it's like I'm
starting to see coverage like in this case that she
tried in two thousand and one, it's there were questions
about whether or not the police handled the DNA evidence
properly in a related case. It's so fucking randomly, you know,
(43:39):
tangentially connected. They ignore the shit about Trump or I
get this and you know, you know you get this too,
for oh, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that about Trump.
That's all bigd in the cake. Don't worry about people
get Trump. They know it's just a lie. They know
he's lying. We don't have to report that he's lying
because they know that's not how this works. That's my
(44:01):
fockery and brought the media and here we are once again.
Speaker 5 (44:05):
And my moment of rockery.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
It's going to be close to yours, which is that
I'm actually going to talk about Tim Walls or I
am gonna Tim Walls. We saw a number of fake scandals.
Axios had something Axios reporter are and retweeted the editor
of the Washington Free Beacon. Let me tell you guys
a secret about the Washington Free Beacon that is not
a real newspaper.
Speaker 5 (44:26):
And Rick Wilson, I would.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Like you to take a minute to explain to listeners
what the Washington Free Beacon is.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Go the Free Bacon, the Daily Caller.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
But Free Beacon is literally funded by fancy Republicans as
an oppo dump machee.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
Well, and that's what the Daily Caller was funded by
Foster Freeze for generation. What those things exist to do?
Daily Caller and Free Bacon especially, they are the cheapest
way to pass a hit piece along. Okay, after I
Trump pissed off last week, they immediately sent whatever opa
bullshit to the Free Beacon, the Daily call or whatever
(45:01):
it is, and they're firing emails at us like only
to respond to something that happened in twenty twenty. Fuck
off their whole world. Their whole range of behavior is
to try to launder bullshit opo so that the New
York Times picks it up, or the Washington Post picks
it up, or that Politico picks it up. They post
these stories that are always structured in such a way
(45:23):
if you read them correctly, you can identify which oppo
researcher wrote the fucking thing for them.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yes, the Washington Free Beacon out a piece that said
Waltz boasted in nineteen ninety three he was named the
Outstanding Young Nebraska of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
Well, it turns.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Out what that means is that basically there was a
kind of typo and it had said, in fact, he
was the junior the outstanding young Nebraska. He was actually
the outstanding by the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce. And
this is a scandal which Alex Thompson from Axios has found.
Speaker 5 (46:03):
It was a typo.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
This is the kind of gotcha bullshit that these guys
just absolutely love, and they do it to launder it
so that the mainstream press will pick it up. And
they do it for well they did it before, for clicks.
Even though what you should know is Bridebart, Daily Call
or Free Beacon, National Review, Gayway Pundit all these things
(46:26):
in the right wing media sphere. They've been collapsing for
a long time in terms of their readership, and at
the moment, in the last set of com Score numbers,
all of them are falling off a cliff. I mean,
Magazine probably has more readers than the Free Beacon.
Speaker 5 (46:42):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
And look, you know they're working super hard because I'm
going to tell you a secret about Tim Walls.
Speaker 5 (46:48):
He's very popular.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
Yeah, they're going to have to really really up their
game if they want to try to take down Tim Walls.
And so far, see, they made the worst OPA mistake, right,
They made a fundamental opera mistake. Ma pros know. But
a lot of these people grew up in like the
Trump era, where we were in a particular lacuna in
our media and political history where a tweet or a
post on Gateway pundit could change an election, not a
(47:13):
good way. But they made an opera mistake. They should
have led up with the small shit. Okay, they should
have let up and said, oh, well, we'll start with
did he lie about this Chamber of Commerce thing? And
then find some of the little bullshit thing a little
and then you say, when they hit him with the
big one. There's a pattern of deceptive behavior on the
part of them, right, They're too impulsive and stupid to
do that kind of thing, and they just don't understand it.
(47:35):
And Harris has learned a trick, one that I've learned,
you know, painfully, is when those people in that particular
part of the Maggi ecosphere are going after you ignore them.
Learning walls could do in that case to help their
their case is to somehow go out and teres with outrage.
That's why Harris whenever somebody says Cambela colombabla, oh campbell
(47:58):
a dingdong, all that fucking bullshit they're doing, they desperately
want the Harris campaign to go, oh, dull, you must
pronounce your name, you up, regis scoundrel and stead They're
like the fuck out of here. Yeah, that is the
way to handle these people. You cannot give them the
attention that will help them elevate the story. You have
to just move on, kick ass, go past them.
Speaker 5 (48:21):
Exactly. That is right. Thank you, Rick Wilson, Thank you well.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
With John Fast, I will be seeing you tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics.
Speaker 5 (48:37):
Make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
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Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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