April 14, 2025 • 38 mins
The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Trump’s erosion of public confidence in his plans to "Make America Great Again." Then we’ll talk to Senate Minority Leader and Antisemitism in America author Chuck Schumer about the Democrats’ plans to fight the SAVE Act.
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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, and Bernie Sanders held his largest rally
yet in Los.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Angeles to over thirty six thousand people. We have such
a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own
Rick Wilson joins us to talk about Trump's inability to
make America great again again. Then we'll talk to Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer about his plans to fight and
(00:34):
kill the Save Act.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
But first the news, Samali Uh, The big news over
the weekend is Trump had these tariffs that were going
to be real hardcore, and then it turned out there's
a whole lot of carve outs.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, well there are carve outs. And then so on
Friday night, Donald Trump he had said he was going
to do a trade war. Then he started a trade war.
Then perhaps he got a phone call. Perhaps he got
a phone call from one Tim Apple. You may remember
Tim Apple. He's a man who makes a lot of
cell phones and computers and laptops. Because late Friday night,
(01:09):
Trump announced that cell phones, chips, and laptops will get
a reprieve from tariffs oh, interesting. So the only thing
that's going to really get tariffs are toys, goods, and clothing. Now,
let me add that. On Sunday, on the Sunday Shows,
Trump's Commerce Secretary, or as we like to think of him,
a nice guy who got where things went a little
(01:31):
too far, a man named Howard Lutnick.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Said, So, you're saying that the the tariffs on things
like smartphones and laptops, iPhones, all those iPhones built in China,
that those tariffs are temporarily off, but they're going to
be coming break back on in another form in a.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Month or so or what are you saying?
Speaker 6 (01:54):
Correct? That's right, that's right.
Speaker 7 (01:56):
Semi conductors and pharmaceuticals will have a tariff model in
order to encourage them to rea sure to be built
in America. We need our medicines, and we need semiconductors
and our electronics to be built in America. We can't
be the holding and rely upon foreign countries for fundamental
things that we need. We can't be relying on China
(02:19):
for fundamental things.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I can't hear any more of that because it makes
me really upset. But let me just say two things here.
The whole point was that markets started freaking out because
Trump World was back and forth, first of all, because
Trump World was fourth with the tariffs. But then the
back and forth created more uncertainty, which is what sent
(02:41):
the price of our bonds down and made it more
expensive to borrow money in this country because all of
a sudden, foreign investors don't think of US as a
safe haven they used to think of us as. Now
we have the Commerce Secretary on the Sunday shows music
about putting back the tariffs, and by the way, there's
still tariffs. Sunshine is still just not with the cutout,
(03:02):
and also teariffs on Canada and Mexico. And here's the
Commerce Secretary being like, well, maybe we'll do it anyway.
This is all bad and will be bad. And I
am not a psychic, but my guess is that both
the bond markets and the public markets will not like
this tomfoolery.
Speaker 8 (03:20):
Now, there's this very viral TikTok this week, and one
of the most popular ones that showed person in China
showing how many things in their house are made in
America and the inswun and the conswers none, and then
they're like, how many products are made in China in
your house. And I think that put a fine point
on it.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, I want the people of Latoussu in Africa buy
more Chevy suburbans.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
Somali.
Speaker 8 (03:45):
There's been a very big dispute with the governor of Maine,
Janet Mills and mister Trump, and the courts are now
getting involved.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, and let me tell you here's what's going to happen.
Trump is going to lose. Trump administration order to unfreeze
fund in dispute with Maine over transgender students. This is
what Janet Mills. By the way, there are people who
stand up to Trump and they are heroes. There are
people who acquiesce to Trump and they are cowards. That
is it. There is no equating here. You are either
(04:16):
brave or you are a coward. You are either a
law firm that makes a deal with the Trump administration
or you are a law firm that is brave. And
if you are a person who works in one of
these cowardly law firms, you know, I pity you because
you don't have to do that. Trump administration is going
to lose in court. Janet Mills is going to win.
(04:37):
You can't punish an entire or state by not letting
them have the money that is theirs. And by the way,
this is just eroding federalism. I mean, he is just
picking on states. And by the way, there are governors
who run who have done a really good job of
standing up to Trump. They are Janet Mills, they are
(04:58):
Tim Walls, they are Pritzker, Governor Pritzker. And then there
are governors who have gone in there and kissed the
ring and ended up having to hide behind a folder.
You know who you are.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Yeah, that was sad.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
So speaking of other governors, Oh, this really breaks my
heart that he had to go through this. Governor Shapiro
and his family were evacuated after someone apparently tried to
set fire to the governor's residence in Harrisburg.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, we don't know the circumstances yet, but it's not
good and it is really not how any of us
want to live, and it's not how any of us
need to live. Right. What we need is we need
our electeds and including the President of the United States
Donald J. Trump, saying to people that they should not
do anything violent, that everything should be peaceful, that we
(05:48):
should all be very focused on resolving our differences with
words and not with anything else. It's really disappointing to
see stuff like this. Again, we don't know what it was,
so perhaps it was some kind of mechanical saying, and
let's all hope it was.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (06:06):
So, in really really despicable, despicable news, the new FEMA
head has denied North Carolina's REQUESTICS at one hundred percent
reimburson for Hurricane Helene's damage.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I think it's important to remember that Hurricane Helene was
used by Trump world right. They said that Biden wasn't
giving people the stuff they needed. They said that Biden
was slow rolling FEMA because it was a red district. Okay, Well,
now Trump is president and he is saying the Federal
Emergency Management Agency will end its one hundred percent match
(06:40):
for Helena's disaster recovery in North Carolina. The need in
western North Carolina remains immense. People need to be removed,
homes rebuilt, and roads restored, said Governor Josh Stein in
a news release. I'm extremely disappointed and urged the President
to reconsider FEMA's bad decision, even for ninety day. Six
(07:00):
months later, the people of western North Carolina are working
hard to get back on their feet. They need FEMA
to get the job done. Well, guess what Donald Trump
is amusing about getting rid of FEMA. So that'll mean
the next one of these that happens, there'll be no
one to help, and that would be really, really dark.
And I think it's probably worth remembering that Donald Trump
(07:24):
lied about Biden and this hurricane, and now he is
president and we're seeing just the kind of stuff he
was doing for FEMA, and it was honestly nothing good.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project in
the host of the Enemy's List Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
Rick Wilson, Hey, Emily, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (07:49):
Just great job, great spiffing, Thank you, lovely, darling.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Things are going really great. I don't even know where
to start the disappearing the grad students, or the Trump
versus this room board, or the tear of chaos.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of a lot
right now.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Where where do we even start?
Speaker 6 (08:11):
Honestly, I think we start where the thing that will
be the controlling factor on everything else is the economic chaos.
And if it continues, we are going to be in
a point where Trump won't have to worry about trying
to disappear more grad students or fire more Social Security
workers because it will be outright, you know, people living
(08:34):
in the radioactive ruins, eating roasted rats over a fire.
We're not out of the economic woods yet, even though
he has continued to back out of his tough talk
bullshit in the last few days.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, President GI clearly wants to make a phone call.
He just doesn't know how.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
He doesn't have a phone.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
You know, he clearly wants to work this out, poor man.
He just doesn't now.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Those unsophisticated chinaman or whatever Trump would call them in
his racist way.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And then last night he went to a fight in Miami.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
Because yeah, as one does, he's.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Laser focused on the damage he is causing. And Bernie
Sanders was giving a big speech in California and at Cochella.
And why you know it's working is because the New
York Post was furious at Bernie.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Uh huh.
Speaker 6 (09:28):
Yeah. You can always count on the rupert barometers of Fox,
the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal to play
the middle brow, lowbrow and highbrow maga action.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Okay, highbrow is the Wall Street Journal. Middlebrow is the
New York Post because it's still being read and lowbrow
is Fox?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Right?
Speaker 6 (09:47):
Correct? I say that saying there's not a lot of
gap between the low and the middle.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, I was gonna say, but it is a good point.
And like this week, what we saw was that highbrow
Fox aka the Wall Street Journal ed page was toying
with the possibility that maybe he should be impeached on
the tariffs. That was a headline for the Ages. Baby.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
The idea that causing enormous economic damage to the country
is an impeachable offense is one that honestly is closer
to legitimacy than you know. We don't like Donald Trump,
and I do think that there's a degree to which Trump's,
you know, standing on the deck of the Titanic right now,
(10:31):
as he keeps trying to look he understands how badly
he screwed this up. He's trying to back and fill,
he's trying to get out of it, he's trying to whatever.
But this problem isn't over. China and other countries are
dumping US treasuries right now, folks y, Yeah, right now.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So let's just backpedal for a minute and talk about
what happened here. Trump decided that the economy was good,
and that Joe Biden had left him a really good
opportunity to look good. So he decided, instead of doing
all he needed to do was good, continued disappearing grad students.
He could continue flouting the rule of law. All he
(11:08):
needed to do, he could continue installing in autocracy. All
he needed to do was not crash the public markets.
And you damn you if you try to tell my
man Donald Trump not to do something.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Absolutely, you know what I'm going to tell Donald he
should definitely not take up base jumping, because at this point, no,
you're molly, But that's exactly the point. There's a literary term.
He has the imp of the perverse on his shoulder.
He's always going to do the thing everyone goes, hey,
that's a really terrible idea, sir. He will always go
and do that thing. He will always go and say, well,
(11:40):
if they say I can't shoot elon into the sun
on a rocket, I'm definitely going to do is try.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
He says, we're going to bring back manufacturing, or we're
going to raise a ton of money with tariffs or whatever.
We're going to bring it back to smooth holly. Because
I've heard that the Great depression was great for wealthy
white guys. So he decides he's going to do this.
No one in his North Korean style cabinet it has
any courage because they've all gotten their jobs because they're cowards.
(12:08):
So they all say, yes, Master, can I please have another?
He crashes the public market day after day after day,
and finally when it becomes clear that the dollar is
possibly not going to be the reserve currency anymore because Americans,
instead of selling stocks and going into bonds, are selling
stocks and going into their mattresses or other countries or
(12:29):
who even knows what Donald Trump is like watching Maria
barda Roma interview Jamie Diamond and Jamie Diamond. Now again,
we don't know if it was just as Jamie Diamond
interview or it was a whole slew of different who knows.
But the point is, whatever it was, was the moment
(12:52):
that Donald Trump was like, ooh, maybe I have overplayed
my hand here.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
This is what I call the Tiajuana weekend moment.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I love that you have the ti i Wana weekend moment,
because oh I didn't I have.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
A Tijuana weekend story including so much bad stuff. But
but but the Tijuana weekend story is this. On Thursday,
you're like, we're going to Tija Wan. It's going to
be awesome. And then by Friday afternoon you're like, this
is going to be the best thing ever, and you
start drinking. And sometimes Saturday, at mid afternoon you wake
up in a car covered in vomit and there might
(13:28):
or might not be a dead hooker in the trunk,
and you start having regrets, and then you start we.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Say, sex worker, sex worker, a dead sex worker. Yeah,
that's if I have nothing else. Okay, go on.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
But the problem at that point is then you have
to flee the country. Then you have to figure out
how to bury a dead sex worker in the desert. Yes,
all these things add up quickly, and you're like, oh God,
is there something I don't know? But all of that
starts to accumulate quickly, and it's just like a car crash.
A car crash only takes one second, but after the crash,
(14:00):
we're covering in the hospital, fixing the car, dealing with
the legal consequences. All of it takes forever. He has
already caused the damage to go on and on and
on it will continue. At this point, China is choking
off American exports around the globe.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yes, they are.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
They are doing everything they can.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Those guys fuck. In case you're wondering, chief focks, what
are the pooh fucks? Yeah, there, We're in a lot
of trouble with the chick. This is not going well.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Look, they're going to start selling energy across the Pacific
more than they do right now. They're going to cut
off the American beef industry. And again there's a rumor
last week floating around among the Senate Republicans that they
were going to have to do, at least for the
first month of the tariffs, one hundred and fifty billion
dollar relief package for farmers, the airlines, American ag and timber.
(14:49):
And at that point you're like, oh, wait, have we
made a mistake, because if we're playing one hundred and
twelve billion dollars a month, it's going to come out
to like one point five trillion dollars a year to
support the trade war, which was supp going to make
us so much money. You don't you would even know
how much money you have. There'll be so much money.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well, luckily we have doge, which is cutting everything except anything.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
You know, from two trillion, Molly down to one hundred
and fifty billion. That seems like promising your mom and
dad you're gonna get straight a's and you get four
fsent a d.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
You know. My favorite part of this is there's a
really good piece in the New York Times today by
David Fahrenhold where he looks at the numbers and then
he has people from the Woke Cato Institute.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
Yes, those liptards are Cato.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Liptards, a Cato saying the emperor has no clothes. And
mister Mott's group has provided an online ledger of budget cuts,
which he calls the Wall of Receipts. The ledger is
riddled with omissions and flaws.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
The idea of one or two trillion dollars I'm sure
on paper it was really super appealing and some mentally
sort of appeal, but real talk, we are not winning
on budget cuts. The way to really have done this
was if you were to assemble, as by the way
both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did at different
points in their administrations. If you were to assemble teams
of what we call auditors and management consultant experts and
(16:18):
program experts to go through the budget. You could find
this thing called savings. Now, it doesn't mean you put
a twenty two year old kid named big Dick or
whatever his name is.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Big balls are all about accuracy here. Yes, I'm sorry
politics big balls.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
A previous assertion made on this program calling Elon Musk's
in cell catamite big Dick, was in fact incorrect. His
nom de douche is big balls.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Thank you, sir. Accuracy matters here.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Accuracy matters. But you would do this in a serious
grownaway Bill Clinton did it. Every serious approach to this
would have involved people who were doing audits and people
who were studying the programs, and it wouldn't be slash
and burn horseshit by a bunch of people who know
nothing about nothing and who go into government with the
attitude of my main job is to suck down all
(17:09):
this data and give it to Elon for his AI
to train on. Because that's what's happened they're taking I
promise you we're going to find this out, either now
or later, that Elon's monkeys have been taking all this
government data and sucking it over to Grock dot Ai,
his AI company, so it can train on our personal information.
I promise you that's what's going on. I can't prove
(17:31):
it yet, but I know who these people are.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Listen, man, all I can say is that Kevin Hasset
on the Sunday Shows today. I love this man. I mean,
there are a lot of sad people in this administration.
You are sadder than Kevin Hassett.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
Yeah, Kevin Hassett is a sad person. I saw Ray
Navarro or Ron Vara, as you may.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Know, everyone's favorite Harvard.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
PhD based economist Ron Vara.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Is Harvard going to take back that PhD for fake
citing himself.
Speaker 6 (18:01):
I want to know if Elon has found Ron Vari's
phony social Security number yet. Yes, but I saw him,
I mean literally he was. He was still trying to
hold up this bullshit of all these countries have come to.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Us, they want to make us, except China.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
Except China. And actually, when Welker asked him what countries,
it was like hammanahamanahamanahamana, because it's a lie. We know
it's a lie. It's a surch story only with the
international trade Listen.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I'm sure Japan came. It's a tiny economy riddled with stagslation,
which could be us in five years, five years, five days,
so hasse. I'm going to read you a Hassid quote,
and I'm going to let you muse on it. The
whole point of the trade policy is to address the
national emergency, which is you ready go, We are two
(18:48):
dependent on foreign products in the United States, especially in
a time of conflict. That's the national emergency.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
I can think of a number of other national emergencies
that we are currently involved with, including a trade where
we started and shouldn't have started, and that is blowing
back on us wild I mean, let's put it this way, folks.
I was told that the price of eggs and groceries,
which you may have heard of, Molly. I don't know
if you've heard of this word groceries.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It's a very old fashion word.
Speaker 6 (19:13):
It's an old fashion word.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's an old fashioned word used mostly by my chef
and my driver.
Speaker 6 (19:19):
But the idea that prices are suddenly soaring across the board.
I was told in twenty twenty four that that was
the big issue. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
That's why I was told that Joe Biden could not
get reelected.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
Right, And I was told that the smart black lady
was unacceptable because she didn't understand the crisis in working
class America.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
That's right, and Trump is good for the economy and
going to bring down prices. I'm still waiting. It's working
so well, working great.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
We have some other crises right now that I think
are bigger. And maybe I'm just an old fashioned traditional
libertarian when I think you shouldn't snatch grad students off
the street. When I think that searching people's phones who
are here legally on a visa to see if they've
ever said a harsh word against Donald Trump and then
deporting them if they have, or if they said anything
critical of Israel and deporting them if they have. They're
(20:09):
missing that First Amendment, which call me crazy. They're missing
the Fifth Amendment. They're missing all these This entire mess
that we find ourselves in right now has to do
with a contempt for the Constitution, a contempt for the
rule of law, a contempt for institutions, a contempt for Congress.
And the Republicans in Congress fuck them because they're letting
him get away with it every day. As much as
(20:30):
John Thune and these guys are talking a big game,
and as much as they're saying, oh well, we're going
to hold it on on it. They're not. They could
be doing things right now. I've heard from sources that
Thune has quietly gone to Susie and other people in
the White House and that Steven Miller told them to
basically fuck off. The Senate Majority leader was basically told
to fuck off by Steven fucking Miller. And they've done nothing.
They will do nothing. They are afraid of him and
(20:53):
afraid of Trump, and so they're going to sit on
their hands and they're going to say, oh, we can't
really do much right now because all the good guys
would be taken out by muggs in a primary. At
this point, there are no good guys. That's the secret.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, so Trump has lost the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Dave Portnoy, right, Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports.
Speaker 6 (21:18):
By the way, Molly, can I say just bring up
one thing. So last night Trump went to this UFC
match and one of the fighters in the arena for
all their elected concerned about anti Semitism was a Hitler
quoting alt right kind of dipshit. And Dave Portnoy was
there waving an Israeli flag. But I can remember a
time when a president wouldn't go to an event where
an alt right nazi dipshit was performing in some capacity.
(21:41):
Then that time, by the way, would have been all
former presidents.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, let's talk about what we're seeing now. We have
this trade war that we'll keep going. There will be
again intended consequences and unintellded consequences, which is like the
first Trump presidency really as a study in unintended consequences.
Right to impeachments. I think we're going to see a
(22:05):
lot of that coming down the pike. There is still
this case that the Supreme Court is going to look
at which could strip Trump's tear off powers away. I
think that is a real thing.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
They've been talking about it behind closed doors. They're whispering
about it. They've sort of semi threatened it to the
White House, and they're not at the end going to
do it.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
No, Congress won't do it, but the Supreme Court may
do it.
Speaker 6 (22:31):
The Supreme Court may do it. I also think that
we saw with the unanimous ruling, because as we talked
about on Friday, when this Supreme Court rules and something unanimously,
it's very noteworthy. Yeah, man, the White House's response essentially,
since that has been fuck you. I want to see
what happens next, because if the answer is fuck you,
if the only answers fuck you, then the Supreme Court
(22:52):
it faces a existential test of its legitimacy. And if
it does not take immediate actions to sanction this administration
and hold the people at DHS in contempt and cause
them pain, then the Supreme Court will lose its entire
basis for its role in our system of government.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, let's just have two more seconds on this, because
what can the Supreme Court do at this moment and
what can they not do? Like they could strip him
of the tariff power, and I think there's a real
chance that happens if it gets there. You know, they
said that even people who are in this country illegally
have the rights to do process, which by the way,
(23:32):
MAGA was saying they didn't. So this is actually a
real thing.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
And MAGA is very angry about this because they have
this very twisted view of the Constitution, and the Constitution
for them means white Protestant Christians from the south of
the Midwest have a full panoply of rights and no
one else does. Whether they're Americans, or not. And let's
not forget I'm not being facetious at the moment when
Carolyn Levitt sat there on the podium and said, Oh,
(23:57):
we're looking for ways where we could deport you citizens
who say the wrong thing too.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:03):
Yes, that's not a joke anymore, y'all. No, No, that's
not the Trump administration, you know, owning the libs or trolling.
That's the Trump administration warning people that they wish to
violate the Constitution and they wish to deport American citizens
and seek retribution on American citizens who Trump does not like.
We've joked over the years about Yasse and Gemo, but
(24:24):
there are people in his world who would like that,
and they will pursue it until they are stopped from
pursuing it.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Correct, Rick Wilson, will you come back?
Speaker 6 (24:32):
You know I will.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Chuck Schumer is the Senate Minority Leader and the senior
Senator from the great state of New York. Welcome to
Fast Politics, Senator Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Great to be back with you, Molly.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
We're in the middle of tearor this insane TERRORFF situation,
and I want you to talk us through where we
are with that. There are bills. There's a bill that passed.
It hasn't passed the House, but there certainly sounds like
there's numbers to pass a bill in the Senate. Where
are we with trying to wrangle some teriff authority back
(25:10):
from the president?
Speaker 9 (25:11):
Well, first, MOLLI, these tariffs are just terrible and it's
a tax, a huge tax. We call it the Trump tariff.
Tax on American families. Even with the little bits of
step back that they did, Yale estimated it would cost
the average American family forty four hundred dollars a year,
more money for food and for prescription drugs, more money
(25:32):
for clothing, and for gas, you name it. It goes up.
And why are they doing this? This is the most
despicable part of this at all.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
All.
Speaker 9 (25:41):
First, they give six different reasons, but the number one
reason is they want to use this to give more
tax breaks to billionaires. So these billionaires who are doing
damn well already would get more money and the average
consumer would pay a cost of forty four hundred dollars
a year.
Speaker 5 (25:56):
It's outrageous.
Speaker 9 (25:57):
The stock market for people who have four oh one K,
and that's more than half the people in the country.
The average person with a four oh one k lost
one hundred thousand dollars. What are they going to do
if you're about to retire. So it's awful, awful with.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
The tariffs part of the problem and the reason why
Trump paused them, though there are still a lot of
tariffs in place, especially in Canada Mexico. The reason he
paused it was because the bond market freaked out and
it looked like people were not going to buy our
debt and the dollars down from the you know, the
lowest since I don't know, you know, five years or whatever.
(26:31):
So it seems as if because of the irrationality of
the Trump administration, people don't want to invest in America.
Speaker 9 (26:40):
Yeah, Molly, people need certainty. Businesses need certainty. People need certainty.
So consumer confidence is at the lowest leveling years because
you're not going to buy that car if the tariff
is going to slap you with two three thousand dollars
of extra costs.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Right, But that's consumer confidence which is also at record
lows and is starting to really be something that may
drive it to a recession if we're not there yet.
But the world is also may not use the dollar
as the default currency anymore. You guys in Senate and
the House may be able to put some guardrails up.
(27:14):
Where are you with this?
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Okay?
Speaker 9 (27:16):
So we have one bill that passed the Senate because
we got every Democrat voting to get rid of the
We did the Canadian taris first because that was last
week and we got four Republicans to vote for it.
Maria Cantwell put together a bipartisan bill with Grassley. We
haven't had that on the floor yet. We'll try to
have to force them to put it on the floor
(27:37):
best we can. But that's seven more Republicans joined in.
Public sentiment is everything. The public realizes how crazy this is.
You know, they look at it and they say the
administration has a different explanation. Even at the same time,
Musk not my cup of tea. He called this guy
Navarro a moron. Who's the guy in charge of it.
(27:57):
So the public is telling Republican congressmen and senators. They're saying, wtf,
get rid of these damn things. They're killing us, and
they're beginning to feel the heat. I had an amendment
in the reconciliation bill of two weeks ago, the first
budget bill to say no tariffs, all the tariffs go
away if the price of groceries goes up. They didn't
vote for it two weeks ago, but they're going to
(28:18):
have to vote on it again, and there's going to
be much more pressure on them to vote for it
now that the prices are going up and that people
see how crazy they are.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
When you say, public sentiment is not with them, do
you think and it seems to me like this is
a real thing. Like last weekend we saw millions of
people march to protect Social Security and medicare. Do you
think that that actually works, that that actually helps you?
And tell us why why?
Speaker 9 (28:44):
Because if they're constituents in Republican districts, go to them
and say stop doing what Trump wants. They're afraid of Trump.
He threatens them. But what's against that is the threat
of losing your election of people your own Republican allies
not voting for you. And we're seeing that, and that's
why we're seeing for the first time real cracks in
the Republican wall on this issue of tariffs. And I
(29:06):
think we'll find them on Medicaid. Right now, they're in
a total mess on the budget because some of them,
at least some of them don't want.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
To cut Medicaid that much.
Speaker 9 (29:15):
I went into three Republican districts in nursing homes that
said they'd closed if they cut Medicaid, and Republicans were
there saying, we can't vote for these guys anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
There's also a teariff case going up to the Supreme Court.
It is by the group that is funded by Leonard
Leo and the surviving Koch brother Yep. Do you think
there's a world because we saw this week that the
Supreme Court they were nine zero on due process? I mean,
do you think that there's a world where the Supreme
(29:44):
Court takes his power away from him?
Speaker 5 (29:45):
Yes?
Speaker 9 (29:46):
The law is very clear that if Congress wants to
take the power of tariffs away from the executive branch,
they can.
Speaker 5 (29:52):
It's crystal clear.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
And so even the Supreme Court hardly I voted against
all these right wingers who were put on the court
and argue against them. But even the Supreme Court, I think,
is seeing how nuts this administration is, how crazy they are,
and some of them may pull back. As you saw,
even on due process we got a little bit of daylight,
(30:14):
not enough, but a little.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Do you feel that there were things that Biden could
have done differently to protect norms and institutions, or do
you think he did as much as he could have.
Speaker 9 (30:25):
Well, obviously on certain issues we could have done more,
and Biden could.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Have done some more on certain things.
Speaker 9 (30:32):
But overall, the Trump administration has gone No administration has
ever gone as crazy to undo norms in every way
in terms of social security. Look, this has been sacred
in America. The bottom line is that they're trying to
now eliminate, strangle it. You know what they did last week.
Not only did they cut off the phone lines to
Social Security offices, not only closing social Security offices. They
(30:56):
closed one in Westchester, they closed one in Elmira. Now
they're saying no email to Social Security offices. But they're
doing this across the board. I mean, one of the
worst things we were going to talk about this is
the Save Act.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, let's talk about the Save Act because it passed
the House and it's coming to you.
Speaker 9 (31:12):
It's despicable. First, I want to tell your listeners it
will not pass. I'm the minority leader. They need sixty
votes for it. They will not get the sixty votes.
Democrats will not vote for it. Here's what it does.
About half the people in America couldn't vote anymore, particularly
poor people, people of color, women. If you have to
have either a passport or a certified license, if you
(31:36):
were married in a different name, you'd have to get
a new document with your married name on it to vote.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Half Americans don't have passports.
Speaker 9 (31:44):
So many women don't you know, their birth certificate which
they use is their name they were born with, not
the name they changed to. This is like the Old South.
This is the Jim South in the whole Republican Party.
And they put so many barriers in the way of
voting that basically, if this asked, our democracy would be
totally diminished, even gone. More than half the people I
(32:05):
estimate who vote now couldn't vote. But we will not
let it pass period, Over my dead body. It is despicable.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Trump has made a number of executive orders or at
least one, where he has tried to exert power over
our elections, which are supposed to be controlled by the states.
Speaker 10 (32:23):
Can you talk about how dangerous that is. It's totally dangerous.
This is the whole wellspring of America. Is voting is democracy,
and even when we've had severe disagreements.
Speaker 9 (32:33):
We've kept democracy. No administration has come close, has come
close to abandoning destroying the democracy. It is totally at risk,
as this SAYAC shows with them doing it.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
But I do think we can beat it.
Speaker 9 (32:47):
And there's no question about it that it is our
right to that. They cannot do this over Congress because
you know it would go so far that it would
be crazy. And they are crazy, don't get me wrong,
but it's generally even the Republicans, except that they got
to pass this stupid thing.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
I wouldn't say stupid, I'd say this fucking thing. I
hate it.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
So AOC and Bernie are on this stop the Oligarchy tour,
They've got Maxwell Frost, they've got different people. Do you
think Democrats need to do more of this to go everywhere? Yes, Look,
there's lots of things we have to do.
Speaker 9 (33:22):
We have to fight them every way, every day, and
we have to show how bad Trump is, as we
did on the tariffs, and as you saw the polling
by CBS this morning, people are understanding how bad these
tarts are for their well being.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
But it's on everything.
Speaker 9 (33:35):
It's on Medicaid, it's on Social Security, it's on tax breaks,
for the wealthy, and the rallies are we go to
court and we've won three quarters of our court cases.
We have a lot of good progressive groups and we're
working with them closely, the ags, you know, the Attorney's
General like Tis James. So we go to court, but
organizing is key, and these rallies are really important.
Speaker 5 (33:55):
I'm so glad to see so many people at them.
Speaker 9 (33:57):
And then what we're also doing is telling people go
into these Republican districts, let them know that, for instance,
all the healthcare would go down the drain go to
rural areas if they cut Medicaid by what they want
to cut it by, Molly, rural hospitals would just close.
They're often the biggest employer and the only source of
health care. Go after education. There's cutting education dollars in
(34:21):
so many areas. Public education is everything. There's no choice.
We have to go after them in every way. And
the rallies inspire people to do it, and then they
get them that, we get the names and we can
organize them going into the letting particularly the more rural
Trump voting districts, know that this guy is betraying them.
He's not doing what he promised. He is just for
(34:42):
the wealthy. There's a billionaire little bubble up there. The
billionaires all talk to each other. They don't understand what
working people go through.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Talk to me about the violence. We have this Josh
Shapiro story today. What can we do?
Speaker 9 (34:55):
This is yeah, we don't know the cause yet, so
it's a little premature to say it happened. But it's
despicable and the kind of right wing rhetoric is just
awful and that should be curved. Whether it had anything
to do with this violence or not, it's just awful.
And my heart goes out to the Shapiro family that
was celebrating evidently their passover stator when the governor's mansion
(35:18):
was set on fire, and the damage, from what I understand,
is quite extensive.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
We have this situation, I mean, it's Passover. We're Jews.
It's been I think, a very tough time for Jews.
We have NATANYAHUO has really tried to use anti Semitism
as a cudgel. We see this administration trying to use
anti Semitism as an excuse to depoor people. For me,
my passover sator last night, my cousin is a son
(35:44):
of survivors. You know him, Herald Confluence.
Speaker 5 (35:46):
I do.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
And he was weeping about his dad and the Warsaw
Ghetto and the Warsaw uprising. And we're watching an administration
use our names in order so to be anti democratic.
Speaker 9 (36:00):
So we have to stand up strongly against anti semitism
when it's anti semitism, but never let it be used
as an excuse to go after something else. Plain and simple,
thank you, thank you, thank you, it's great to talk
to you. Happy passover, it's the second day.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yes, yes, thank you. Thanks. No, No moment Brick Wilson,
Moly Jong fast, let's go, moment of fuckery.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
Moment of fuckery. I think Trump is losing allies and
surprising places.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yes, Trump Commerce secretary sends Americans into a spin with
an astonishing admission and yet another tear. If you turn
guess where that comes from.
Speaker 6 (36:44):
Would it be from a progressive libtard far left outlet.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
It might in fact be from my nemesis, The Daily
They Love You that has gone whoa, they're woke now.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
The Daily Mail is one more of this sort of
constellation of things. You would have expected to stick with
Trump to the very end, and yet they really haven't
they really are lately. I mean, especially on the economic front.
Right now, they were blasting Lutnick, They've been blasting the tariffs.
I think that there's a sense of them calling some bullshit.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah. I have to say the Daily Mail, like the
New York Post, is one of the most disgusting pro
Trump outlets, and they have really gone along with some
of the just the most craven lies about Harris. Turns out,
you'll be shocked to know that, in fact, even they
(37:39):
have a red line, and it's when Trump loses money
for very wealthy people.
Speaker 6 (37:44):
Yes, it is. By the way, I'd also like to
point out a minifuckery item. Yeah, if Donald Trump weighs
two hundred and twenty four pounds and has a blood
pressure of one twenty eight over seventy four, then I'm
a fucking ballerina. That is all nano fuckery.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 6 (38:05):
All right, see you, sud. Thanks.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going Thanks for listening,
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Bernie Sanders held his largest rally
yet in Los.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Angeles to over thirty six thousand people. We have such
a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own
Rick Wilson joins us to talk about Trump's inability to
make America great again again. Then we'll talk to Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer about his plans to fight and
(00:34):
kill the Save Act.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
But first the news, Samali Uh, The big news over
the weekend is Trump had these tariffs that were going
to be real hardcore, and then it turned out there's
a whole lot of carve outs.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, well there are carve outs. And then so on
Friday night, Donald Trump he had said he was going
to do a trade war. Then he started a trade war.
Then perhaps he got a phone call. Perhaps he got
a phone call from one Tim Apple. You may remember
Tim Apple. He's a man who makes a lot of
cell phones and computers and laptops. Because late Friday night,
(01:09):
Trump announced that cell phones, chips, and laptops will get
a reprieve from tariffs oh, interesting. So the only thing
that's going to really get tariffs are toys, goods, and clothing. Now,
let me add that. On Sunday, on the Sunday Shows,
Trump's Commerce Secretary, or as we like to think of him,
a nice guy who got where things went a little
(01:31):
too far, a man named Howard Lutnick.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Said, So, you're saying that the the tariffs on things
like smartphones and laptops, iPhones, all those iPhones built in China,
that those tariffs are temporarily off, but they're going to
be coming break back on in another form in a.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Month or so or what are you saying?
Speaker 6 (01:54):
Correct? That's right, that's right.
Speaker 7 (01:56):
Semi conductors and pharmaceuticals will have a tariff model in
order to encourage them to rea sure to be built
in America. We need our medicines, and we need semiconductors
and our electronics to be built in America. We can't
be the holding and rely upon foreign countries for fundamental
things that we need. We can't be relying on China
(02:19):
for fundamental things.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I can't hear any more of that because it makes
me really upset. But let me just say two things here.
The whole point was that markets started freaking out because
Trump World was back and forth, first of all, because
Trump World was fourth with the tariffs. But then the
back and forth created more uncertainty, which is what sent
(02:41):
the price of our bonds down and made it more
expensive to borrow money in this country because all of
a sudden, foreign investors don't think of US as a
safe haven they used to think of us as. Now
we have the Commerce Secretary on the Sunday shows music
about putting back the tariffs, and by the way, there's
still tariffs. Sunshine is still just not with the cutout,
(03:02):
and also teariffs on Canada and Mexico. And here's the
Commerce Secretary being like, well, maybe we'll do it anyway.
This is all bad and will be bad. And I
am not a psychic, but my guess is that both
the bond markets and the public markets will not like
this tomfoolery.
Speaker 8 (03:20):
Now, there's this very viral TikTok this week, and one
of the most popular ones that showed person in China
showing how many things in their house are made in
America and the inswun and the conswers none, and then
they're like, how many products are made in China in
your house. And I think that put a fine point
on it.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, I want the people of Latoussu in Africa buy
more Chevy suburbans.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
Somali.
Speaker 8 (03:45):
There's been a very big dispute with the governor of Maine,
Janet Mills and mister Trump, and the courts are now
getting involved.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, and let me tell you here's what's going to happen.
Trump is going to lose. Trump administration order to unfreeze
fund in dispute with Maine over transgender students. This is
what Janet Mills. By the way, there are people who
stand up to Trump and they are heroes. There are
people who acquiesce to Trump and they are cowards. That
is it. There is no equating here. You are either
(04:16):
brave or you are a coward. You are either a
law firm that makes a deal with the Trump administration
or you are a law firm that is brave. And
if you are a person who works in one of
these cowardly law firms, you know, I pity you because
you don't have to do that. Trump administration is going
to lose in court. Janet Mills is going to win.
(04:37):
You can't punish an entire or state by not letting
them have the money that is theirs. And by the way,
this is just eroding federalism. I mean, he is just
picking on states. And by the way, there are governors
who run who have done a really good job of
standing up to Trump. They are Janet Mills, they are
(04:58):
Tim Walls, they are Pritzker, Governor Pritzker. And then there
are governors who have gone in there and kissed the
ring and ended up having to hide behind a folder.
You know who you are.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Yeah, that was sad.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
So speaking of other governors, Oh, this really breaks my
heart that he had to go through this. Governor Shapiro
and his family were evacuated after someone apparently tried to
set fire to the governor's residence in Harrisburg.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, we don't know the circumstances yet, but it's not
good and it is really not how any of us
want to live, and it's not how any of us
need to live. Right. What we need is we need
our electeds and including the President of the United States
Donald J. Trump, saying to people that they should not
do anything violent, that everything should be peaceful, that we
(05:48):
should all be very focused on resolving our differences with
words and not with anything else. It's really disappointing to
see stuff like this. Again, we don't know what it was,
so perhaps it was some kind of mechanical saying, and
let's all hope it was.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (06:06):
So, in really really despicable, despicable news, the new FEMA
head has denied North Carolina's REQUESTICS at one hundred percent
reimburson for Hurricane Helene's damage.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I think it's important to remember that Hurricane Helene was
used by Trump world right. They said that Biden wasn't
giving people the stuff they needed. They said that Biden
was slow rolling FEMA because it was a red district. Okay, Well,
now Trump is president and he is saying the Federal
Emergency Management Agency will end its one hundred percent match
(06:40):
for Helena's disaster recovery in North Carolina. The need in
western North Carolina remains immense. People need to be removed,
homes rebuilt, and roads restored, said Governor Josh Stein in
a news release. I'm extremely disappointed and urged the President
to reconsider FEMA's bad decision, even for ninety day. Six
(07:00):
months later, the people of western North Carolina are working
hard to get back on their feet. They need FEMA
to get the job done. Well, guess what Donald Trump
is amusing about getting rid of FEMA. So that'll mean
the next one of these that happens, there'll be no
one to help, and that would be really, really dark.
And I think it's probably worth remembering that Donald Trump
(07:24):
lied about Biden and this hurricane, and now he is
president and we're seeing just the kind of stuff he
was doing for FEMA, and it was honestly nothing good.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project in
the host of the Enemy's List Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
Rick Wilson, Hey, Emily, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (07:49):
Just great job, great spiffing, Thank you, lovely, darling.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Things are going really great. I don't even know where
to start the disappearing the grad students, or the Trump
versus this room board, or the tear of chaos.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of a lot
right now.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Where where do we even start?
Speaker 6 (08:11):
Honestly, I think we start where the thing that will
be the controlling factor on everything else is the economic chaos.
And if it continues, we are going to be in
a point where Trump won't have to worry about trying
to disappear more grad students or fire more Social Security
workers because it will be outright, you know, people living
(08:34):
in the radioactive ruins, eating roasted rats over a fire.
We're not out of the economic woods yet, even though
he has continued to back out of his tough talk
bullshit in the last few days.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, President GI clearly wants to make a phone call.
He just doesn't know how.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
He doesn't have a phone.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
You know, he clearly wants to work this out, poor man.
He just doesn't now.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Those unsophisticated chinaman or whatever Trump would call them in
his racist way.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And then last night he went to a fight in Miami.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
Because yeah, as one does, he's.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Laser focused on the damage he is causing. And Bernie
Sanders was giving a big speech in California and at Cochella.
And why you know it's working is because the New
York Post was furious at Bernie.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Uh huh.
Speaker 6 (09:28):
Yeah. You can always count on the rupert barometers of Fox,
the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal to play
the middle brow, lowbrow and highbrow maga action.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Okay, highbrow is the Wall Street Journal. Middlebrow is the
New York Post because it's still being read and lowbrow
is Fox?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Right?
Speaker 6 (09:47):
Correct? I say that saying there's not a lot of
gap between the low and the middle.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, I was gonna say, but it is a good point.
And like this week, what we saw was that highbrow
Fox aka the Wall Street Journal ed page was toying
with the possibility that maybe he should be impeached on
the tariffs. That was a headline for the Ages. Baby.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
The idea that causing enormous economic damage to the country
is an impeachable offense is one that honestly is closer
to legitimacy than you know. We don't like Donald Trump,
and I do think that there's a degree to which Trump's,
you know, standing on the deck of the Titanic right now,
(10:31):
as he keeps trying to look he understands how badly
he screwed this up. He's trying to back and fill,
he's trying to get out of it, he's trying to whatever.
But this problem isn't over. China and other countries are
dumping US treasuries right now, folks y, Yeah, right now.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So let's just backpedal for a minute and talk about
what happened here. Trump decided that the economy was good,
and that Joe Biden had left him a really good
opportunity to look good. So he decided, instead of doing
all he needed to do was good, continued disappearing grad students.
He could continue flouting the rule of law. All he
(11:08):
needed to do, he could continue installing in autocracy. All
he needed to do was not crash the public markets.
And you damn you if you try to tell my
man Donald Trump not to do something.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Absolutely, you know what I'm going to tell Donald he
should definitely not take up base jumping, because at this point, no,
you're molly, But that's exactly the point. There's a literary term.
He has the imp of the perverse on his shoulder.
He's always going to do the thing everyone goes, hey,
that's a really terrible idea, sir. He will always go
and do that thing. He will always go and say, well,
(11:40):
if they say I can't shoot elon into the sun
on a rocket, I'm definitely going to do is try.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
He says, we're going to bring back manufacturing, or we're
going to raise a ton of money with tariffs or whatever.
We're going to bring it back to smooth holly. Because
I've heard that the Great depression was great for wealthy
white guys. So he decides he's going to do this.
No one in his North Korean style cabinet it has
any courage because they've all gotten their jobs because they're cowards.
(12:08):
So they all say, yes, Master, can I please have another?
He crashes the public market day after day after day,
and finally when it becomes clear that the dollar is
possibly not going to be the reserve currency anymore because Americans,
instead of selling stocks and going into bonds, are selling
stocks and going into their mattresses or other countries or
(12:29):
who even knows what Donald Trump is like watching Maria
barda Roma interview Jamie Diamond and Jamie Diamond. Now again,
we don't know if it was just as Jamie Diamond
interview or it was a whole slew of different who knows.
But the point is, whatever it was, was the moment
(12:52):
that Donald Trump was like, ooh, maybe I have overplayed
my hand here.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
This is what I call the Tiajuana weekend moment.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I love that you have the ti i Wana weekend moment,
because oh I didn't I have.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
A Tijuana weekend story including so much bad stuff. But
but but the Tijuana weekend story is this. On Thursday,
you're like, we're going to Tija Wan. It's going to
be awesome. And then by Friday afternoon you're like, this
is going to be the best thing ever, and you
start drinking. And sometimes Saturday, at mid afternoon you wake
up in a car covered in vomit and there might
(13:28):
or might not be a dead hooker in the trunk,
and you start having regrets, and then you start we.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Say, sex worker, sex worker, a dead sex worker. Yeah,
that's if I have nothing else. Okay, go on.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
But the problem at that point is then you have
to flee the country. Then you have to figure out
how to bury a dead sex worker in the desert. Yes,
all these things add up quickly, and you're like, oh God,
is there something I don't know? But all of that
starts to accumulate quickly, and it's just like a car crash.
A car crash only takes one second, but after the crash,
(14:00):
we're covering in the hospital, fixing the car, dealing with
the legal consequences. All of it takes forever. He has
already caused the damage to go on and on and
on it will continue. At this point, China is choking
off American exports around the globe.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yes, they are.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
They are doing everything they can.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Those guys fuck. In case you're wondering, chief focks, what
are the pooh fucks? Yeah, there, We're in a lot
of trouble with the chick. This is not going well.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Look, they're going to start selling energy across the Pacific
more than they do right now. They're going to cut
off the American beef industry. And again there's a rumor
last week floating around among the Senate Republicans that they
were going to have to do, at least for the
first month of the tariffs, one hundred and fifty billion
dollar relief package for farmers, the airlines, American ag and timber.
(14:49):
And at that point you're like, oh, wait, have we
made a mistake, because if we're playing one hundred and
twelve billion dollars a month, it's going to come out
to like one point five trillion dollars a year to
support the trade war, which was supp going to make
us so much money. You don't you would even know
how much money you have. There'll be so much money.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well, luckily we have doge, which is cutting everything except anything.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
You know, from two trillion, Molly down to one hundred
and fifty billion. That seems like promising your mom and
dad you're gonna get straight a's and you get four
fsent a d.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
You know. My favorite part of this is there's a
really good piece in the New York Times today by
David Fahrenhold where he looks at the numbers and then
he has people from the Woke Cato Institute.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
Yes, those liptards are Cato.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Liptards, a Cato saying the emperor has no clothes. And
mister Mott's group has provided an online ledger of budget cuts,
which he calls the Wall of Receipts. The ledger is
riddled with omissions and flaws.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
The idea of one or two trillion dollars I'm sure
on paper it was really super appealing and some mentally
sort of appeal, but real talk, we are not winning
on budget cuts. The way to really have done this
was if you were to assemble, as by the way
both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did at different
points in their administrations. If you were to assemble teams
of what we call auditors and management consultant experts and
(16:18):
program experts to go through the budget. You could find
this thing called savings. Now, it doesn't mean you put
a twenty two year old kid named big Dick or
whatever his name is.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Big balls are all about accuracy here. Yes, I'm sorry
politics big balls.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
A previous assertion made on this program calling Elon Musk's
in cell catamite big Dick, was in fact incorrect. His
nom de douche is big balls.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Thank you, sir. Accuracy matters here.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Accuracy matters. But you would do this in a serious
grownaway Bill Clinton did it. Every serious approach to this
would have involved people who were doing audits and people
who were studying the programs, and it wouldn't be slash
and burn horseshit by a bunch of people who know
nothing about nothing and who go into government with the
attitude of my main job is to suck down all
(17:09):
this data and give it to Elon for his AI
to train on. Because that's what's happened they're taking I
promise you we're going to find this out, either now
or later, that Elon's monkeys have been taking all this
government data and sucking it over to Grock dot Ai,
his AI company, so it can train on our personal information.
I promise you that's what's going on. I can't prove
(17:31):
it yet, but I know who these people are.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Listen, man, all I can say is that Kevin Hasset
on the Sunday Shows today. I love this man. I mean,
there are a lot of sad people in this administration.
You are sadder than Kevin Hassett.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
Yeah, Kevin Hassett is a sad person. I saw Ray
Navarro or Ron Vara, as you may.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Know, everyone's favorite Harvard.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
PhD based economist Ron Vara.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Is Harvard going to take back that PhD for fake
citing himself.
Speaker 6 (18:01):
I want to know if Elon has found Ron Vari's
phony social Security number yet. Yes, but I saw him,
I mean literally he was. He was still trying to
hold up this bullshit of all these countries have come to.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Us, they want to make us, except China.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
Except China. And actually, when Welker asked him what countries,
it was like hammanahamanahamanahamana, because it's a lie. We know
it's a lie. It's a surch story only with the
international trade Listen.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I'm sure Japan came. It's a tiny economy riddled with stagslation,
which could be us in five years, five years, five days,
so hasse. I'm going to read you a Hassid quote,
and I'm going to let you muse on it. The
whole point of the trade policy is to address the
national emergency, which is you ready go, We are two
(18:48):
dependent on foreign products in the United States, especially in
a time of conflict. That's the national emergency.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
I can think of a number of other national emergencies
that we are currently involved with, including a trade where
we started and shouldn't have started, and that is blowing
back on us wild I mean, let's put it this way, folks.
I was told that the price of eggs and groceries,
which you may have heard of, Molly. I don't know
if you've heard of this word groceries.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It's a very old fashion word.
Speaker 6 (19:13):
It's an old fashion word.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's an old fashioned word used mostly by my chef
and my driver.
Speaker 6 (19:19):
But the idea that prices are suddenly soaring across the board.
I was told in twenty twenty four that that was
the big issue. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
That's why I was told that Joe Biden could not
get reelected.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
Right, And I was told that the smart black lady
was unacceptable because she didn't understand the crisis in working
class America.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
That's right, and Trump is good for the economy and
going to bring down prices. I'm still waiting. It's working
so well, working great.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
We have some other crises right now that I think
are bigger. And maybe I'm just an old fashioned traditional
libertarian when I think you shouldn't snatch grad students off
the street. When I think that searching people's phones who
are here legally on a visa to see if they've
ever said a harsh word against Donald Trump and then
deporting them if they have, or if they said anything
critical of Israel and deporting them if they have. They're
(20:09):
missing that First Amendment, which call me crazy. They're missing
the Fifth Amendment. They're missing all these This entire mess
that we find ourselves in right now has to do
with a contempt for the Constitution, a contempt for the
rule of law, a contempt for institutions, a contempt for Congress.
And the Republicans in Congress fuck them because they're letting
him get away with it every day. As much as
(20:30):
John Thune and these guys are talking a big game,
and as much as they're saying, oh well, we're going
to hold it on on it. They're not. They could
be doing things right now. I've heard from sources that
Thune has quietly gone to Susie and other people in
the White House and that Steven Miller told them to
basically fuck off. The Senate Majority leader was basically told
to fuck off by Steven fucking Miller. And they've done nothing.
They will do nothing. They are afraid of him and
(20:53):
afraid of Trump, and so they're going to sit on
their hands and they're going to say, oh, we can't
really do much right now because all the good guys
would be taken out by muggs in a primary. At
this point, there are no good guys. That's the secret.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, so Trump has lost the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Dave Portnoy, right, Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports.
Speaker 6 (21:18):
By the way, Molly, can I say just bring up
one thing. So last night Trump went to this UFC
match and one of the fighters in the arena for
all their elected concerned about anti Semitism was a Hitler
quoting alt right kind of dipshit. And Dave Portnoy was
there waving an Israeli flag. But I can remember a
time when a president wouldn't go to an event where
an alt right nazi dipshit was performing in some capacity.
(21:41):
Then that time, by the way, would have been all
former presidents.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, let's talk about what we're seeing now. We have
this trade war that we'll keep going. There will be
again intended consequences and unintellded consequences, which is like the
first Trump presidency really as a study in unintended consequences.
Right to impeachments. I think we're going to see a
(22:05):
lot of that coming down the pike. There is still
this case that the Supreme Court is going to look
at which could strip Trump's tear off powers away. I
think that is a real thing.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
They've been talking about it behind closed doors. They're whispering
about it. They've sort of semi threatened it to the
White House, and they're not at the end going to
do it.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
No, Congress won't do it, but the Supreme Court may
do it.
Speaker 6 (22:31):
The Supreme Court may do it. I also think that
we saw with the unanimous ruling, because as we talked
about on Friday, when this Supreme Court rules and something unanimously,
it's very noteworthy. Yeah, man, the White House's response essentially,
since that has been fuck you. I want to see
what happens next, because if the answer is fuck you,
if the only answers fuck you, then the Supreme Court
(22:52):
it faces a existential test of its legitimacy. And if
it does not take immediate actions to sanction this administration
and hold the people at DHS in contempt and cause
them pain, then the Supreme Court will lose its entire
basis for its role in our system of government.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, let's just have two more seconds on this, because
what can the Supreme Court do at this moment and
what can they not do? Like they could strip him
of the tariff power, and I think there's a real
chance that happens if it gets there. You know, they
said that even people who are in this country illegally
have the rights to do process, which by the way,
(23:32):
MAGA was saying they didn't. So this is actually a
real thing.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
And MAGA is very angry about this because they have
this very twisted view of the Constitution, and the Constitution
for them means white Protestant Christians from the south of
the Midwest have a full panoply of rights and no
one else does. Whether they're Americans, or not. And let's
not forget I'm not being facetious at the moment when
Carolyn Levitt sat there on the podium and said, Oh,
(23:57):
we're looking for ways where we could deport you citizens
who say the wrong thing too.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:03):
Yes, that's not a joke anymore, y'all. No, No, that's
not the Trump administration, you know, owning the libs or trolling.
That's the Trump administration warning people that they wish to
violate the Constitution and they wish to deport American citizens
and seek retribution on American citizens who Trump does not like.
We've joked over the years about Yasse and Gemo, but
(24:24):
there are people in his world who would like that,
and they will pursue it until they are stopped from
pursuing it.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Correct, Rick Wilson, will you come back?
Speaker 6 (24:32):
You know I will.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Chuck Schumer is the Senate Minority Leader and the senior
Senator from the great state of New York. Welcome to
Fast Politics, Senator Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Great to be back with you, Molly.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
We're in the middle of tearor this insane TERRORFF situation,
and I want you to talk us through where we
are with that. There are bills. There's a bill that passed.
It hasn't passed the House, but there certainly sounds like
there's numbers to pass a bill in the Senate. Where
are we with trying to wrangle some teriff authority back
(25:10):
from the president?
Speaker 9 (25:11):
Well, first, MOLLI, these tariffs are just terrible and it's
a tax, a huge tax. We call it the Trump tariff.
Tax on American families. Even with the little bits of
step back that they did, Yale estimated it would cost
the average American family forty four hundred dollars a year,
more money for food and for prescription drugs, more money
(25:32):
for clothing, and for gas, you name it. It goes up.
And why are they doing this? This is the most
despicable part of this at all.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
All.
Speaker 9 (25:41):
First, they give six different reasons, but the number one
reason is they want to use this to give more
tax breaks to billionaires. So these billionaires who are doing
damn well already would get more money and the average
consumer would pay a cost of forty four hundred dollars
a year.
Speaker 5 (25:56):
It's outrageous.
Speaker 9 (25:57):
The stock market for people who have four oh one K,
and that's more than half the people in the country.
The average person with a four oh one k lost
one hundred thousand dollars. What are they going to do
if you're about to retire. So it's awful, awful with.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
The tariffs part of the problem and the reason why
Trump paused them, though there are still a lot of
tariffs in place, especially in Canada Mexico. The reason he
paused it was because the bond market freaked out and
it looked like people were not going to buy our
debt and the dollars down from the you know, the
lowest since I don't know, you know, five years or whatever.
(26:31):
So it seems as if because of the irrationality of
the Trump administration, people don't want to invest in America.
Speaker 9 (26:40):
Yeah, Molly, people need certainty. Businesses need certainty. People need certainty.
So consumer confidence is at the lowest leveling years because
you're not going to buy that car if the tariff
is going to slap you with two three thousand dollars
of extra costs.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Right, But that's consumer confidence which is also at record
lows and is starting to really be something that may
drive it to a recession if we're not there yet.
But the world is also may not use the dollar
as the default currency anymore. You guys in Senate and
the House may be able to put some guardrails up.
(27:14):
Where are you with this?
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Okay?
Speaker 9 (27:16):
So we have one bill that passed the Senate because
we got every Democrat voting to get rid of the
We did the Canadian taris first because that was last
week and we got four Republicans to vote for it.
Maria Cantwell put together a bipartisan bill with Grassley. We
haven't had that on the floor yet. We'll try to
have to force them to put it on the floor
(27:37):
best we can. But that's seven more Republicans joined in.
Public sentiment is everything. The public realizes how crazy this is.
You know, they look at it and they say the
administration has a different explanation. Even at the same time,
Musk not my cup of tea. He called this guy
Navarro a moron. Who's the guy in charge of it.
(27:57):
So the public is telling Republican congressmen and senators. They're saying, wtf,
get rid of these damn things. They're killing us, and
they're beginning to feel the heat. I had an amendment
in the reconciliation bill of two weeks ago, the first
budget bill to say no tariffs, all the tariffs go
away if the price of groceries goes up. They didn't
vote for it two weeks ago, but they're going to
(28:18):
have to vote on it again, and there's going to
be much more pressure on them to vote for it
now that the prices are going up and that people
see how crazy they are.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
When you say, public sentiment is not with them, do
you think and it seems to me like this is
a real thing. Like last weekend we saw millions of
people march to protect Social Security and medicare. Do you
think that that actually works, that that actually helps you?
And tell us why why?
Speaker 9 (28:44):
Because if they're constituents in Republican districts, go to them
and say stop doing what Trump wants. They're afraid of Trump.
He threatens them. But what's against that is the threat
of losing your election of people your own Republican allies
not voting for you. And we're seeing that, and that's
why we're seeing for the first time real cracks in
the Republican wall on this issue of tariffs. And I
(29:06):
think we'll find them on Medicaid. Right now, they're in
a total mess on the budget because some of them,
at least some of them don't want.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
To cut Medicaid that much.
Speaker 9 (29:15):
I went into three Republican districts in nursing homes that
said they'd closed if they cut Medicaid, and Republicans were
there saying, we can't vote for these guys anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
There's also a teariff case going up to the Supreme Court.
It is by the group that is funded by Leonard
Leo and the surviving Koch brother Yep. Do you think
there's a world because we saw this week that the
Supreme Court they were nine zero on due process? I mean,
do you think that there's a world where the Supreme
(29:44):
Court takes his power away from him?
Speaker 5 (29:45):
Yes?
Speaker 9 (29:46):
The law is very clear that if Congress wants to
take the power of tariffs away from the executive branch,
they can.
Speaker 5 (29:52):
It's crystal clear.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
And so even the Supreme Court hardly I voted against
all these right wingers who were put on the court
and argue against them. But even the Supreme Court, I think,
is seeing how nuts this administration is, how crazy they are,
and some of them may pull back. As you saw,
even on due process we got a little bit of daylight,
(30:14):
not enough, but a little.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Do you feel that there were things that Biden could
have done differently to protect norms and institutions, or do
you think he did as much as he could have.
Speaker 9 (30:25):
Well, obviously on certain issues we could have done more,
and Biden could.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Have done some more on certain things.
Speaker 9 (30:32):
But overall, the Trump administration has gone No administration has
ever gone as crazy to undo norms in every way
in terms of social security. Look, this has been sacred
in America. The bottom line is that they're trying to
now eliminate, strangle it. You know what they did last week.
Not only did they cut off the phone lines to
Social Security offices, not only closing social Security offices. They
(30:56):
closed one in Westchester, they closed one in Elmira. Now
they're saying no email to Social Security offices. But they're
doing this across the board. I mean, one of the
worst things we were going to talk about this is
the Save Act.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, let's talk about the Save Act because it passed
the House and it's coming to you.
Speaker 9 (31:12):
It's despicable. First, I want to tell your listeners it
will not pass. I'm the minority leader. They need sixty
votes for it. They will not get the sixty votes.
Democrats will not vote for it. Here's what it does.
About half the people in America couldn't vote anymore, particularly
poor people, people of color, women. If you have to
have either a passport or a certified license, if you
(31:36):
were married in a different name, you'd have to get
a new document with your married name on it to vote.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Half Americans don't have passports.
Speaker 9 (31:44):
So many women don't you know, their birth certificate which
they use is their name they were born with, not
the name they changed to. This is like the Old South.
This is the Jim South in the whole Republican Party.
And they put so many barriers in the way of
voting that basically, if this asked, our democracy would be
totally diminished, even gone. More than half the people I
(32:05):
estimate who vote now couldn't vote. But we will not
let it pass period, Over my dead body. It is despicable.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Trump has made a number of executive orders or at
least one, where he has tried to exert power over
our elections, which are supposed to be controlled by the states.
Speaker 10 (32:23):
Can you talk about how dangerous that is. It's totally dangerous.
This is the whole wellspring of America. Is voting is democracy,
and even when we've had severe disagreements.
Speaker 9 (32:33):
We've kept democracy. No administration has come close, has come
close to abandoning destroying the democracy. It is totally at risk,
as this SAYAC shows with them doing it.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
But I do think we can beat it.
Speaker 9 (32:47):
And there's no question about it that it is our
right to that. They cannot do this over Congress because
you know it would go so far that it would
be crazy. And they are crazy, don't get me wrong,
but it's generally even the Republicans, except that they got
to pass this stupid thing.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
I wouldn't say stupid, I'd say this fucking thing. I
hate it.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
So AOC and Bernie are on this stop the Oligarchy tour,
They've got Maxwell Frost, they've got different people. Do you
think Democrats need to do more of this to go everywhere? Yes, Look,
there's lots of things we have to do.
Speaker 9 (33:22):
We have to fight them every way, every day, and
we have to show how bad Trump is, as we
did on the tariffs, and as you saw the polling
by CBS this morning, people are understanding how bad these
tarts are for their well being.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
But it's on everything.
Speaker 9 (33:35):
It's on Medicaid, it's on Social Security, it's on tax breaks,
for the wealthy, and the rallies are we go to
court and we've won three quarters of our court cases.
We have a lot of good progressive groups and we're
working with them closely, the ags, you know, the Attorney's
General like Tis James. So we go to court, but
organizing is key, and these rallies are really important.
Speaker 5 (33:55):
I'm so glad to see so many people at them.
Speaker 9 (33:57):
And then what we're also doing is telling people go
into these Republican districts, let them know that, for instance,
all the healthcare would go down the drain go to
rural areas if they cut Medicaid by what they want
to cut it by, Molly, rural hospitals would just close.
They're often the biggest employer and the only source of
health care. Go after education. There's cutting education dollars in
(34:21):
so many areas. Public education is everything. There's no choice.
We have to go after them in every way. And
the rallies inspire people to do it, and then they
get them that, we get the names and we can
organize them going into the letting particularly the more rural
Trump voting districts, know that this guy is betraying them.
He's not doing what he promised. He is just for
(34:42):
the wealthy. There's a billionaire little bubble up there. The
billionaires all talk to each other. They don't understand what
working people go through.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Talk to me about the violence. We have this Josh
Shapiro story today. What can we do?
Speaker 9 (34:55):
This is yeah, we don't know the cause yet, so
it's a little premature to say it happened. But it's
despicable and the kind of right wing rhetoric is just
awful and that should be curved. Whether it had anything
to do with this violence or not, it's just awful.
And my heart goes out to the Shapiro family that
was celebrating evidently their passover stator when the governor's mansion
(35:18):
was set on fire, and the damage, from what I understand,
is quite extensive.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
We have this situation, I mean, it's Passover. We're Jews.
It's been I think, a very tough time for Jews.
We have NATANYAHUO has really tried to use anti Semitism
as a cudgel. We see this administration trying to use
anti Semitism as an excuse to depoor people. For me,
my passover sator last night, my cousin is a son
(35:44):
of survivors. You know him, Herald Confluence.
Speaker 5 (35:46):
I do.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
And he was weeping about his dad and the Warsaw
Ghetto and the Warsaw uprising. And we're watching an administration
use our names in order so to be anti democratic.
Speaker 9 (36:00):
So we have to stand up strongly against anti semitism
when it's anti semitism, but never let it be used
as an excuse to go after something else. Plain and simple,
thank you, thank you, thank you, it's great to talk
to you. Happy passover, it's the second day.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yes, yes, thank you. Thanks. No, No moment Brick Wilson,
Moly Jong fast, let's go, moment of fuckery.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
Moment of fuckery. I think Trump is losing allies and
surprising places.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yes, Trump Commerce secretary sends Americans into a spin with
an astonishing admission and yet another tear. If you turn
guess where that comes from.
Speaker 6 (36:44):
Would it be from a progressive libtard far left outlet.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
It might in fact be from my nemesis, The Daily
They Love You that has gone whoa, they're woke now.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
The Daily Mail is one more of this sort of
constellation of things. You would have expected to stick with
Trump to the very end, and yet they really haven't
they really are lately. I mean, especially on the economic front.
Right now, they were blasting Lutnick, They've been blasting the tariffs.
I think that there's a sense of them calling some bullshit.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah. I have to say the Daily Mail, like the
New York Post, is one of the most disgusting pro
Trump outlets, and they have really gone along with some
of the just the most craven lies about Harris. Turns out,
you'll be shocked to know that, in fact, even they
(37:39):
have a red line, and it's when Trump loses money
for very wealthy people.
Speaker 6 (37:44):
Yes, it is. By the way, I'd also like to
point out a minifuckery item. Yeah, if Donald Trump weighs
two hundred and twenty four pounds and has a blood
pressure of one twenty eight over seventy four, then I'm
a fucking ballerina. That is all nano fuckery.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 6 (38:05):
All right, see you, sud. Thanks.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going Thanks for listening,
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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