The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tells us about his month being a Republican. White House communications director Ben LaBolt details the state of the union and what lies ahead for President Biden in the general election. Plus! A clip from our sold-out show at City Winery featuring Rick Wilson & surprise guest George Conway.
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 recently obtained email show that Donald Trump was always planning.
To say the election was stolen.
I am shocked. I'm totally shocked. We have such a great show for you today. White House communications director the One the Only Ben Lebolt talks to us about the state of the Union and what lies ahead for the president.
Then we're going to play you a.
Clip from our Soldown City Winery show featuring the One the Only Rick Wilson and surprise guest George Conway. But first we have The Washington Post's own Dana Milbank.
Welcome back, Too Fast Politics.
Dana Milbank, Molly, it's a thrill as always to be with you a thrill.
So I love you and love having you on the podcast. I was excited to have you. Oh, I'm very like not DC because I like hug people and tell them that I like them.
That's like not I feel like that's not the culture.
It's my culture in DC. You can hang with me anytime.
But I wanted to talk to you about this PC for The Washington Post, where it's so crazy. I mean, I don't know if it is, like it's not that crazy, but it is also that crazy my month of living the republicanly. So you I want you to. I'm not going to steal your.
Thunder here because it's so hilarious. So explain to us what you did.
Well, you know that it is possible and throughout the country. Really the laws vary by state to vote in whatever primary you want to it just as long as you register is that party a certain number of days before the election. And in DC it's very easy. You just got to become a Republican three weeks before the primary. So it is a friend's suggestion that is exactly what I did. I've always been independent and registered independent, you know, because I'm scrupulously neutral in all things political, and also I just don't like messing around, you know, voting for local primaries I don't really know about.
Let's be honest. You live in the district.
Yeah, so my vote is a total throwaway anyway, and it doesn't really count. But here was a chance for my vote to count because in twenty sixteen, Marco Rubio and John Kasik actually beat Trump, who came in a distant third. So I was like, you know, I could be part of Trump's only defeat in the entire primary season. It turns out indeed, he did lose in the district of Columbia. He also lost in Vermont, so we don't have the sole distinction. But you know, there were only I think twelve hundred and fifty votes for Nikki Haley. That's how big the Republican Party is in all of DC. So she won with sixty three percent, which means all of two thousand people voted in this primary. But I was one of them. So I feel like I had a measurable effect on dealing this devastating defeat to Donald Trump.
What I love about this story is that Trump has done a lot of I wanted to say, tweets, but we know they are truths, a lot of truths. The iron A too rich on how these radical leftist democrats are voting in the primary and denying him of his coronation.
So you are one of those radical leftist democrats.
Well, except I was more of a radical leftist and Hendon technically, but yeah, in fact, I hadn't yet become a Republican when he was railing about them doing it to him in New Hampshire, and there, in fact, you had to do it months in advance of the primaries. I was like, all right, this really gets under his skin. So it was all the better reason to do it. And you know, he's been all about how you vote for Nikki Haley, you're banished permanently from MAGA, and of course it's thrilled a lot of Haley supporters. Idea absolutely thrilled me, you know, and I've always sort of, you know, styled myself sort of you know, rhino, lowercase rhino, just you know, never quite a real Republican, and that's that's what I was officially.
So one of the things that you did was you just embraced all of the stupid cultural war stuff that Republicans have that have been a sort of a hallmark of trumpsm you ate a Chick fil A, You tell us the other things like that that you did.
Right, And that's why I called it my Month of living republicanly because you know, it just seemed really cheap to really just be a rhino. So I thought I'd really do the stereotypical Republican thing. So I ate at Chick fil a. I shopped at hobby Lobby. I got to back the blue placard that I can have up on my table. I didn't know if I could sleep easy at night, so I bought my pillow from Mike Lindell. It's one with He's screened on to the cover of the pillow holding a flag and the Constitution. I have that for sleeping. My how is the pillow. It's very lumpy and flimsy. I compare it to Donald Trump's legal arguments. I used the Sean Hannity special and it only cost me fifteen bucks. And anyway, my cat likes it, like you know, is sleeping on it right now, no doubt. So I you know, I got my Mike Lindell pillow trying to help him out of debt. I shopped at Hobby Lobby. I went to the Museum of the Bible, you know where Mike Johnson's clare.
I've been there.
Yeah.
I was a little disappointed because you know, he went there and said, how God you know, made him into the new Moses at the red seat moment. But it was like totally non partisan. It was like sort of a Disney version of the Bible. So I was I was kind of disappointed because I wanted to have more of a maga justification.
It doesn't have a real magas my eldest son, yeah me there.
Yeah, Bobby Lobby was more maga than that. But it was tiring, and so after that I went to a sports bar and watched NASCAR. There was a pile up at the beginning of the race, there was a photo finish, and there were all these you know, hair dye for men and copd ads. So I really felt right at home with that. And then I drove three hours out into Virginia to go to a gun show and that was really I mean that those were my mag of people right there.
Did they have disgusting t shirts that say like racist and over sexualized things about our vice president.
Yeah, there was the Confederate flags and the three percenters and Trader Joe. I bought one that said I support Donald Trump, I drink beer, I eat meat, I have guns to protect my family and if you don't like it, move or something to that effect. It was very very pithy.
The lack of pithiness with the trumpy accessories are because you don't have a lot of writers writing that kind of thing.
This is true. They had some great targets that I could shoot at with my guns. There was one with a cowboy with a red dot on his chest and read fart and then he had actual sort of you know, life looking genitals in blue that you could shoot at. Yeah, you know. And there's the survival food, the freeze dried food, and first aid stuff. They were the patriots there, the Massa Newton patriots having their election integrity meeting geese. So you know, these were I felt that these were my people as well. So I think that really rounded out the experience. And it's not that I would want to necessarily be part of that cultural I have to say. I switched, you know, after I voted, I switched my party back to Independent. And then I was passing a Chick fil A and I was thinking, I can still eat there. It's good.
I thought, Chick fil A stopped giving money to anti LGBT causes, Well.
Then I'm not going to eat there anymore.
Did you have the fried oreos at Chick fil A?
No?
I didn't even know about this. You see, you are a better Republican than I am.
Molly, Ah, I'm sure that's not true.
I should have checked with you first on this. No, I just got the fried chicken sandwich and the milkshake.
But was it good.
It was really good, and I think I'm I'm just going to stick with it. I you know, whatever, whatever their politics are, it's good.
So let's talk about what else is happening in the Beltway besides your weird and hilarious story. We are sort of at the end of primary season.
Would you say that's fair?
I would say it's over, yes.
Yeah, and now we have eight months of limping along until this election.
That is a very dreary thought. And I feel it personally as well. I've sort of been following. You know, I was going to cover the primary, but there's no primary to cover, so I've basically been slumming it covering the House Republicans, who it's sort of cheap fun, but they never really disappoint, you know, they're always going to do something wacky. But you know, after this week, I was like, all right, I'm going to finally have to graduate and start covering this interminable presidential campaign. And I'm really not looking forward to it. I can already since the procrastination.
Let's have two seconds on cheap fun. We got to go back because.
Oh please, Yes, I think this is the stupidest group of Republicans that the House has ever seen.
Well, and that's a high bar, but I think, I mean, objectively, we have to say they cleared it this week. What did we do? We spent the last year getting rid of the speaker, having all these showdowns and everything.
And then.
And they're basically passing the same, you know, the same spending bill that Kevin McCarthy agreed to a year ago. So we just wasted the last year having all of these fights that amounted to nothing.
Basically, this entire thing is because Matt Gates was mad at McCarthy for allowing an ethics investigation into.
Him, yes, which is still proceeding.
I mean, so like, think about how stupid that is.
Yeah, it's hard to sort of overstate the stupidity. But you know, it's not like they've done nothing. They've they've impeached majorcas without any impeachable offenses. They've they're very close to impeaching Biden, even though it turns out the whole case is you know, imploded, because they're relying on a whole bunch of felons the main witness is in jail and the ones in jail. The other one is on the lamb.
For his own protection, likely because they worry about the Russians killing him.
And they want to have a hunter Biden hearing with various of his accusers. But they're all going to have to come in orange jumpsuits. Now.
Yeah.
The maiorci Ist impeachment, though, is my favorite of the two failed impeachments, because now they've realized they can't bring it to the Senate.
Right after all that and saying it's really an emergency and our national security depends on getting this guy out of office, They're like, all right, we're just going to sit on this for a while. Yes, that's particularly delightful. I mean, I guess they're hoping that they can draw a maximum attention to it if they pull back for a while. But it does sort of undermine the whole profess need to get rid of the man in the first place.
My favorite stupid moment of the stupidest Congress is actually the moment that they decide that they're going to get rid of Santos, and then over the weekend leadership realizes they actually really need his vote. Because they spend the weekend doing the math that two is less than three, and they somehow on Monday morning they figure that out and they start to try to get people to vote against expelling Santo's but.
It's too late, right, the ship had sailed, and they narrowly do and they are correct that they can't govern without Santos, but I mean they couldn't really govern with him, so it's not a huge difference. But yeah, I mean, like when the majorcas impeachment went down the first time, it was by one vote and Santos tweeting do you miss me now? And Gate says, yes, I miss him already. In fairness, they couldn't really govern before. And you've seen it, I think now six before this congress they had a single rule. You know how the procedural what you started to make had not failed in twenty years, and now they've done it six times over the last year. It would take one hundred and twenty years to have gotten to that under normal proceedings, but they were able to do it all.
Yeah, you know, you got to respect the incompetence. So you know, this is just the stuff. You know, if you watch c SPAN, it's not like the mainstream media is picking up the really crazy stuff, there is still more crazy stuff.
Well, I am trying to fill that vacuum. I've been trying to list every little bit of crazy and I don't know if you know, I have a whole book coming out. I think it's looking like September. It's going to be called The Fools on the Hill. It's just a compendium of crazy. And you know, I'm just going to keep hitting you over the head with all the craziness lest you forget any one delicious nugget of it.
One of the things that I'm struck by was actually, you know, so it looks like they're going to be able to pass this the first tranche.
Of spending bilts. Right, these are the bills that we were just talking about.
But on the floor, Chip Roy is furious and gives this insane speech yesterday where it was like, we didn't do nearly enough. We should be cutting the FBI buy more. I mean, what is happening.
Well, so one third of the House Republicans oppose this, so it just sort of shows you and that's roughly the crazy quotient in the House. And I mean, but that's more than enough to you know, screw up the entire operations of the place, and they have. But you know, it does show you that if Mike Johnson or if McCarthy before I'm actually wanted to try to govern, you could do it with Democratic votes. They would stand up to the crazy. So the option has always been there. It's just like they needed to exhaust every other option before they could do the most sensible thing. So, yeah, the spending wheel. They got rid of all the or virtually all of the crazy riders about abortion, the trans at gay rights, at DEI, and you know, all the other cultural war issues. So they just tossed all of those. They stuck to the spending agreement that McCarthy had Biden reached a year ago alone. Behold, it sails through with i think all Democrats but two or something like that and two thirds of the Republic. So it's not so hard, is it.
So let's talk for a minute about even though this is the rematch presidential race that nobody wanted, where the stakes are impossibly high, yet again, there are some really strange congressional races that are percolating. Magan really continues to pick some of the most incredibly bad candidates I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah, I mean, it'd be tough to exceed what they did the last time around.
They may have done it, though.
They might have. I mean you got to you know, if you look at North Carolina the gubernatorial nominee, I mean, that's something they did get rid of that. I think it's Sandy Smith was the name. She's the one who's sort of been accused by her ex husband of trying to run car and throwing an alarm clock at him. She lost in the general election last time. This time they were able to bump her out the way in the in the primary. But yeah, I mean, I think for everyone that, you know, what's left of the party established is able to knock down a couple of the crazies still get through. They've just sort of lost control of the process. So it's what Tom Massey said a few years ago that you know, he was confused as to what the ideology was of the Republican primary voters, like are they you know, libertarian? What are they? And he finally realized they just want the craziest son of a bitch in the race.
Thomas Massey was happy to oblige. I mean this is a guy who went to ID and now he says.
Crazy, right, and now he walks around with his pocket protector debt counter. So truth is he's one of the more sane ones in that in the house right now.
One of the things that I was struck by was Nikki Haley this week dropped out of the race.
She goes, this is like my favorite thing.
Like she's so quaint, She's like, what our biggest problem is our national Dad. I was like, I haven't heard this since what is this two thousand.
And th right right? Which is like no child left behind the flight right? No, it's it was a great throwback. It's not wrong. It's just there's been a universal decision to just ignore this, not worry about entitlements. Just right off into the sunset.
Do you think that being fiscally sane will come back?
There are so many things we wonder about. Will that, you know, we'll just general sanity and the belief in a strong America leading overseas. Will that come back? Will democracy come back? Well? I would think that you would reach a debt crisis at some point and then that would force a reckoning. But it's you know, it never actually seems to happen. It has not. Injured are standing in the world. So you know all the people who are saying, you know, social Security is going bankrupt, that it cares going bankrupt and we won't be able to issue you dead as the United States, it just hasn't happened. Maybe it just hasn't happened yet, but I've sort of given up on any sort of prudence.
Thank you so much, Dana Milbank, Molly.
It's been a pleasure as always.
Ben Lebolt is the White House Communications Director. Welcome to Fast Politics. Wait, what is your fancy title, Ben.
Lebalt, white House Communications Director.
That seems very fancy.
I can search for a new title if it's too much.
Now it's good.
We like a fancy title here at Fast Politics. Since you are in the admin, I now first.
Want to talk to you about things that happened to me on television last night at one o'clock in the morning. You may not be used to having questions phrase quite like this, but this is where we are. So last night on television at one o'clock in the morning, I'm with Tim Miller.
He's quite wonderful. I love him.
But we were talking about it and he was saying that out of the New Yorker magazine profile.
He said, Well, he said, I'm worried that the White House doesn't think the polls are right and isn't reactive enough and might be complacent. Just for a minute, since you work there, Yeah, tell us why that is not something that necessarily people have to worry about.
Yeah. Look, well, I think entering this year, you know, everybody should know what's at stake. We're quite clear that American democracy is on the line, that rights and freedoms for Americans across the country, or on the line if you're a woman who wants to make their own healthcare decisions, if you're a parent who believes they should decide what books your kids have access to rather than an ideological governor, if you believe that Jane Ray sixth was an insurrection, not a celebration of patriots, I think pretty clear driven by the president, are quite clear on what the stakes are of the president's success on behalf of the American people. In some ways, this year reminds me a little bit of twenty twelve, when I served as the press secretary for the Obama by re election campaign at that time and We went into the year knowing that the country was divided and that the race was essentially tied, and I think we find ourselves in that same position today. And so you know, we're now entering the portion of the year where you know, we're moving closer towards the end of the primaries and the two candidates entering the general election. I think the State of the Union speech is sort of the president's first appeal to the country as a whole, the highest viewership we'll expect the president to see all year, and really to start to reach people with his me She then follow that with travel to key states across the country and make sure that people hear the contrast version of that message and the choice. And so everybody here from the President down is up night and day, recognizing the stakes, doing everything we can to communicate both about the President's record and what's at stake this year.
I want to talk to you about this speech.
This is the State of the Union is an incredible opportunity to talk about some of this stuff that I feel like the Biden administration has accomplished that they haven't gotten credit for in the very narrow and likely wrong polling. So to talk about sort of the accomplishments that you highlighted in this speech.
Well, if you, Molly, I mean, I think the State of the Union offered a few things that offered a chance for the President to look back for the largest audience that he'll face in a long time, and talk through the fact that we overcame the pandemic that was killing so many Americans, that we've collectively built the strongest economy in the world. We've brought inflation down more than any other country, that wages are significantly outpacing inflation, that the racial wealth gap is the lowest it's been in twenty years. That more jobs have been created fifteen million under this administration than any presidential administration in history.
So those are.
Things that people may have heard bits and pieces of before, but they didn't collectively hear it until Thursdaying weren't a lot different situation this year, coming out of the supply chain, inflation coming down than we were last, So that was an important part of the case to be made. The President also looked forward about what must be done now you know, some of these accomplishments could be significantly expanded to impact many more Americans. So you know, with insulin capped at fifteen dollars per seniors, while the President's proposed we should be able to do that for all Americans who require in camping prescription drug costs a two thousand dollars out of pocket a year for seniors. Let's offer that to all Americans. Housing costs. This is something that has been a persistent problem facing Americans up and down the economic scale. The President has proposed some tax breaks to provide mortgage reliefs and building more housing to keep the price of rent down. He recommitted to things like making sure that IVF is available to every single American and that the rollback of grow that we stopped that that we were sore row and you know, all these implications for women and families across the country. So that's a chance to look forward and then also to just talk about what's on the line and what the contrast is against you know, MAGA Republicans and the President is a defender of democracy. This is a very significant moment in US history that will come to it for this November. He stood up for democracy at home and abroad. He's standing up for individual rights and freedoms. Republicans used to be say that they were for freedoms, but they've passed hundreds of bills and state legislatures to take freedoms away and certainly are responsible for the fall of Roe versus Wade at the Supreme Court. And look, their economic approach hasn't worked. You know, the president's predecessor showered billionaires and corporations with two trillion dollars in tax cuts. It exploded the deficit, and the middle class had to pay for it, and they didn't see any benefits out of it. And so you know, the present that laid out the stakes and laid out the contrast in a really compel a way.
Right.
So, one of the many arguments that I have with people in the pundon industrial complex, by the way, I think they're going to kick me out, is that Joe Biden is not a president for you. He is a president for more working class Americans in a way that is I think really sort of like a thing that the Democratic Party sort of lost sight of. And one of the things that makes me think about that is like Biden has had this quest against fees. It's small, it's very un sexy, but I actually think it's something voters really do care about can you talk about that and other things like it.
I think the President's tests is always is this something that your family would talk about around the Thanksgiving table? And people like us, Molly, obviously, we've been hyper political for a big portion of our lives. But you know that the average America and the average family isn't like that. And you know, when I get together with my extended family over Thanksgiving, there's still a lot of people who say, you know, I'm just not interested in politics. It doesn't have that big of an impact on my life, which I've argued to various extents over the years, but I got to tell you it's stuck. Like jug fees where it took a trip, they were loaded up with all these resort fees that didn't even stayed a resort, you know, doubled the cost threat or you know, they want to go see a concert or a game, and you know the ticket company is doubling the fee for that and not disclosing it. I mean, the presence Lens has always been the family million household he grew up with and around in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Claymont, Delaware. You know, working families who struggle to make ends and meet who aren't one hundred percent sure that they'll have job security or financial security and have to strap things together every couple of weeks. And he has kept those Americans, those hardworking Americans, at the heart of his presidency. He's made sure that the earners on the bottom of the wave scale have actually seen the biggest gains under this administration as wages have gone up. He's made sure that the racial wealth gap has closed. His address areas like student debt relief, which had really burdened families and prevented them from you know, putting down at the down payment on a house or having another kid. He's focused on things like the child tax care credit and the economy to make sure that this is just the lenses. Does it impact the daily life of hardworking Americans, and if so, then he's got time to focus on.
So I think that's important point about the junk fees and the sort of smaller pieces of legislation that may not be mass deportation squads but will actually help people's lives. So talk to us about some of the top lines from the speech, and also just some like IVF abortion. I would love you to talk about like sort of the health freedom aspect.
The President believes that this is a significant moment in history that we're living through where democracy is on the line abroad, and and he draws a connection between what's happening abroad in Ukraine and in Europe where Putin's on the march. He's waving a war of aggression against Ukraine. He won't stop there. We know that when dictators and authoritarians are on the march that they'll go into other countries. He's signified that he would like to do so, it least into the Baltics, and that if we don't stop them there, it'll continue and our native alliance, the strongest alliance in history, will be threatened. And by the way, if he enters into a European country that's part of the NATO alliance, we're at war. So we've got to stop Putin in Ukraine, and we've got to stop you know, bowing down to Putin and his government and imply that it's just okay for authoritarians like Putin to seize territory that's not theirs. Well, we're also facing a really significant moment at home and a significant risk to our democracy became very clear on January sixth, where thousands of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election, and Maga Republicans have embraced and the president's predecessor embraced those people not as insurrectionists, not as criminals, but as patriots. Well, that's a very dangerous moment for our country that has not been fully alleviated, and the present believes we need to confront that directly.
So that's one.
Secondly, there's been a rollback of rights and freedoms. The rights and freedoms of Americans across the country are under assault. If you're a gay person that believes their identity should be recognized, if you're a woman who wants to make their own healthcare decisions, if you're worried about what's happening in schools where entire programs and chapters of history are just being torn out of books, Well, this is a moment where we need to fight back for our freedoms and to defend our individual liberties. And the present beliefs that this is a year where we'll make big decisions on that front. And at the art of things, as we talked about earlier, is the present believes we need to continue to build the economy from the bottom up, in middle out instead of the top down. We know what the results have been, record job creation, the strongest economy in the world, record contracts for workers, Unions are expanding, wages are rising. The policies that the President has put into place, which by the way, some people said were too aggressive when he did so, has led those things. He believes we need to can continue our progress. And the MAGA Republicans all they want to do is the same trickle down economic expansion of tax breaks for billionaires and corporations. Well, guess what the President thinks tax fairness should mean. It should mean charging billionaires and corporations their fair share, that we should actually have a minimum tax on billionaires, that we should raise the minimum tax on corporations, that we can actually do things like fund a child tax scar rented in this country for working America.
So let me ask you two questions.
So, one of the things that you guys are going to get into trouble with in this election, and you're already seeing it in some of the exit poll line is progressives who you know in some ways they don't understand just how much the Supreme Court sucks.
And so I want to talk to you about like student debt.
One of the things I think has been really amazing is that the buy An administration has been quietly working around the clock to try to cancel student debt, but not so easy. You guys have canceled certain tranches. Talk to me about where you are and what's happening with that, And also do you think people can understand that the Supreme Court really is just going around trying to undermine legislation at every point.
Well, the good news is you can see from a public pulling that Americans more Americans know about the work that the president's doing on student deck belief than the progress are making out a lot of other issues. So this is one area that's broken through. I think it's broken through in part because the Supreme Court overturned what the President was trying to do in terms of canceling student debt for millions in America. But he didn't allow the Supreme Court decision to stop is canceled student debt for four million Americans to the tune of the one hundred and thirty eight billion dollars in debt relief through every executive lever that he has available to do that, and every couple of weeks every month, there are thousands of new borrowers getting a letter and email from the President saying that their debt is canceled or that their payments are reduced. So he's attacking this from every single angle, and I think it shows the type of work he's done throughout the presidency. You know, he doesn't believe this is a country that should have crumbling infrastructures, So he passed legislation to get forty six thousand infrastructure projects off the ground modernists across the country. He doesn't think Europe and China should lead the world on that.
He thinks the.
United States should. He dug into the supply chain crisis that was causing inflation into individual issues to look at things like semiconductors, which power refrigerators in cars. We invented those in America, but they were being built overseas in Asia, and the present pass bipartisan legislation to make sure we're building those in America again. Factories are getting off the ground in places from New York to Arizona. To make sure that those chips are built here in the United States. I mean, he really took and looked at the pandemic and the financial crisis that came out of it, to say, what do we need to do to build our enomy in a way it's helping working families, that's bringing prices down, and that's addressing the cost issue that Americans are facing at home. And so that's really been the heart of his domestic policy agenda.
Yeah.
One of the things that I've been impressed with that you guys have done is we have this attention economy. The goal here is to get in front of voters and also to inspire young people. How is the Biden Biden administration talking to constituents in ways that are a little bit creative and not necessarily traditional because I think that you guys are doing interesting stuff.
Yeah.
Well, look, you know, from a purch of my job, there's nothing more important than that, and it's what I spend every day on is figuring out how we reach the average person across the country. And you have to realize the average person is not consuming political news right They're going about the day. They may have you know, a morning show or day side TV on to you know, catching bits and pieces of it as they're you know, making lunch or a family member or heading to a job. At night, you know, after dinner, people are watching The Bachelor, you know, more than they're watching the evening news and so.
And some people don't have cable, like anyone under.
Fifty exactly, there's lots of cord cutters now. Streamings increasingly important, and so the media has just become more fractured. People have added new channels to their diet, but they haven't removed the old channels, and so there's diminishing returns on any interview or news event. And so what we have to do is figure out how to reach people everywhere throughout their day on their smartphone, on consumer media that doesn't tend to cover political neviws, on digital media, through every social media platform available. We produced our on content. We talked to the media, We talked to the media at the White House, we talked to the media in the States. We brief influencers who have large reach with their own audiences. We need to reach people across ages and demographics wherever they get their news. So look like we've got you know, talking to you right now. We've got a podcast strategy then my dads didn't have four years ago, So we look at information consumption and we work backwards from that to make sure we're reaching people.
Ben Lebault, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back.
It was great to talk to you and would love to Thanks Molly, and.
Now we have a special clip from our sold out show at City Winery in New York City with Rick Wilson and George Conway. One of the things about Robbie Kaplan is you can't just get any lawyer for that case.
I mean, she.
Really is singularly very smart and go.
And then the way I got to know her was I had she was. She has another case against Sean which most people don't know about. It is a it is a uh it was a class action. I don't think I got certified as a class action. But it involves lots and lots of people who.
They were Trump Steaks, No, Trump Water.
No, it's it's Trump University. No, but it's but it's it was a ripoff. It was it's called no, no, what is it?
That Trump for President campaign?
Free drinks for that table where we go That right, very smart crowd scheme where it was like you can get rich just you know, and roll in our program, send us money. And it basically it was a what they call multiply was that was that the that the and the and the and they and they pushed it on the apprentice. He did and what was Don Jr? And there was I am shocked.
Don Jr.
Was basically lost the load of money and there was you know that you can demonstrate apparently the evidence is pretty strong. You can demonstrate basically there was no way anybody other than Donald Trump and the founders of ACN We're gonna make any money on us. So I had read this complaints, so I have read well, because the judge didn't certify it as a class action, refused are uncertified it as a class action. So that piece of it's going up. So it's not gonna it's not gonna get tried this year. So but you know, at some day he's gonna have to get out of prison to testify in this case. But I mean, you're maybe no, maybe maybe they'll just let him testify for my satellite from you know, from the they'll have to shut down the license plate making room for a couple of hours and he can have his deposition.
I've read in the prison laundry.
Now it's the best rud laundry in any federal correction.
The c before I got here, the prison commissary, no one liked it.
It was strong.
Prisoners came up to me and would say, sir, we have a terrible, terrible commissary.
It's it's it's it's.
Do we need a businessman, a stable genius to run the commissary?
Before the things there, we're not classy. I've made them classy.
And the license plates, they were terrible. They were the worst license plates. Now they shine. They are Trump license.
Plates are more beautiful license plates than these.
When do I tell them to stop? Or can I let them keep doing it?
Oh?
They can keep doing it?
Okay, did this on the We should just do this on the Jimmy Kimmel's right something right, right?
I mean we can.
Okay, Well yeah, I.
Mean, but George, you're you're more bullish than a lot of people. On Trump actually going to prison, Yes, talk about that, because there are a lot of people it's really simple.
Yeah, I mean he's criminal.
I have noticed a lot of criming.
Yeah, yeah, and look at I mean, look at it this way. He's got the ninety one counts basically any combination of them. I mean it's like you gotta okay, they should have a roulette wheel. They've got the quick ninety one. You know, wherever the ball lands, that's three or four years right there. So you know, you just a couple of spins, bye bye.
So that's I feel.
Like you will not be said to see him go.
I you know, I don't wish him unwell. He is unwell. I don't wish him unwell. I mean I I don't.
I think when you like the Republican Party back.
We're never getting it back.
It's gone.
It's gone. It's dead, it's gone. I mean, you know, it's it's basically, if Trump doesn't destroy the Republican Party this year, it'll be because he got elected and he will destroy the country, right, But he's not going to do that. And I think that you can already see the tensions in the Republican Party at the state level. At the federal level, You've got Henry Barber saying no, don't spend the money on Trump's legal defense and his judgments. You know, you've got you've got all these I mean at the state level. Look, the Republican Party is a disaster because all the looney tunes have taken over the state. The state parties, Michigan's are perfect. Florida can't raise any money because they're crazy. You know, we we haven't seen everybody. I want all the Democrats to be paranoid and upset and scared.
We don't don't.
Because I want all of you people to walk on a crawl unbroken glass with people on your back to the you know, in a swing state, please take you know, get on Jet blue or.
Whatever whatever whatever, register legally, and.
That's you know, that's that's the way. You know, it's it's when you assume that, oh, he's such an idiot, he can't win. Is y he wins? Yeah, And that's what happened in twenty sixteen.
I remember twenty sixteen. I was talking to people around Clinton World.
They're like, oh man, they've got this in the bag. It's amazing.
They were hanging out in.
Brook they were picking out curtains in the west wind.
They were like, I'm going to be the deputy Secretary of Commers, I'm going to be in the state and where were they after that?
And then and then but they figured it out, like with seven days to go before the election, which is why they held that big rally in Philadelphia, and it was and they never how many times they go to Wisconsin zero?
Yeah, but the reason they did go to Wisconsin was because every time she went it wasn't good, was it didn't do whatever.
Here's here's the book.
The reason why she lost was because the election became about her.
Yeah.
The reason why he lost in twenty twenty was because the election was about him, because he was the incumbent and the lunatic. And twenty twenty four he is going to lose because he cannot help but make the election about him, because everything has to be about him. And they can tell him, no, you have to say you have to you know, you have to talk about Joe Biden, and he'll mutter some things about Biden crime family where he's see and then he's gonna say blah blah, and then and then and then people like people like Rick are gonna run ads saying you know, you are a lunatic, You're a madman, and he's gonna say, no, I'm not. He's gonna spend all day saying I'm a stable genius and he's gonna look like a complete and one of the things we have to do this year, everybody was upset about this guy herd the council. It's like, no, he did he doesn't. He did us a favor because he put the mental state of our presidential candidates an issue. And okay, hey, Joe's old. He forgets stuff. I forget stuff. We're all forgetting stuff. Okay, he needs more sleep than he used to, like my dog, like my dog, Bonnie.
Yes, okay, Bonnie, and so fucking what Yeah, okay, and you're here, all right, So so let's let's talk about You got the old guy who's nice and not crazy and doesn't wanna it, doesn't want.
To destroy the be a dictator for damn a minute.
Or burn down the republic, burn down the.
Republic, or you know, reak vengeance upon his enemies.
That's us, by the way, in case you're wondering, Yeah.
I want the I want the bungalow nearest to the to the fire pit.
So yeah, that's what Givemo is known for its bungalows.
But anyway, I mean, you know, one of the one of the great failures. So the press was that, I mean, it's his problem. Isn't just that he's losing it, like he's losing it in terms of his ability to recall things, his language ability is is aphasia, all these things. His problem is the same problem he's had this entire life. He's a narcissistic sociopath. And and the thing that's that's that's.
We're gonna clap for narcissistic.
Exact, everybody cluster b let's hear it for cluster We having a hand for all these people who know what cluster b is. Everyone took a cluster b he he we need to talk about that. And four years ago, oh my god, four and a half years ago, I wrote a piece in The Atlantic that was like eleven thousand words trying to get people to focus on the fact that he was a narcissist somath. No. But you know, I mean it got some press. It really got a lot of play in the Beltway. I think all of the basically all the journalists read it and they said, oh, that makes sense, but they still ill wouldn't report it because because well, well there's there's first of all, there's there's a, there's a everybody's used to his lunacy. So you know, we've defined deviancy down if you will, and we've we've basically, you know, or psychologists or sociology called it malignant normality. And so everything he's graded on a curve. But there's the gold Water Rule, and the press always afraid about the Goldwater Rule says says that mental health professionals cannot talk about people who are not their patients, and they and and so they're afraid to go near it. The problem is all the reasons behind the Goldwater Rule don't apply here. Like one is, well, how can you how can you say somebody has this condition if you haven't examined them. Dude, we have been examining this fucking guy for how many years now? Nine nine years, nine nine and years. And it's not like it's not like it's ambiguous or marginal. I mean, if you look at you know, this isn't hard. I mean, it's it's actually written in plain English that diagnosed The Constatistical Manual of of of mental disorders is the description of narcissistic personality disorder and it's and anti social personality disorder. Of the two clear ones that he clearly has. You go through one through nine, only like five of them you have to have. He's nine for nine, like five, they're like five of them. For for sociopathy, ding ding ding ding ding, you only need like three. It's like so much winning, so much winning and everything. If you look at those behavioral characteristics, it explained everything makes sense about Donald Trump. Everything, the pathological line that's basically part and parcelov of the self regard, the talking about himself, the fact that he thinks that that the soldiers who die and to protect democracy are our suckers and losers. Okay, this is this is this is Donald Trump. This is his this is his sociopathy and his narcissism. And and you know, there was there was one I was sort of wondering about, Well, was he is he is? There is Does he assault people? Yes, yeah, we've proven that already. And and there are just so many I mean it, literally he checks every box. And we need to start talking about that because it explains almost everything about him, about his desire to use the government as an instrument for revenge, about his problem with not seeking consent before in trying to engage in sexual relations, with other people, and you know his fevery stealing documents and money. Do I mention the pathological line? Yeah, you know, it's all. It all makes sense when you say this is this guy is textbook and and the press will not talk about it. They'll just say, oh, he's unconventional because he's a fucking lunatic.
But take him seriously but not literally, No, take him literally.
He's crazy and and and you know, I I think that's something that we need to talk about this year. And now that we.
Are he's the nominee again.
We're gonna start talking about it this year more than ever. And you you know, we're.
Gonna talking over The goal is we're going to talk about it for eight months and then we're never going to talk about him, right.
That's what we want, and then we go back to having normal politics with normal presidents who you might not agree with, but who you don't think are going to.
Asp You know what, I don't think we're going to be clear of it, even if we beat him this year. I don't think we're going to be clear of it for a while. There's a lot of bad incentives out there, I hope. So there's a lot of bad incentives out there to make people act in crazy ways.
And that's not in the clubhouses. Yeah, right, running there the Lauren Boberts. But that's the thing. I mean, I think the Republican Party is going to fall apart because those people are not going to be able to hold it together. Yeah.
One of the things go ahead, one of the things you would say to me for years now, as you've been saying to me, he's going to destroy the Republican Party.
Yes, yes, I mean functionally the party doesn't exist.
It doesn't exist anymore.
Right, there's no ideology, there's no philosophy, there's no plan of governance.
It's all about Well, there was the twenty twenty Republican platform.
You mean, the one that was whatever Donald says goes.
Yeah. They said we will just reprint the one from twenty sixteen.
It's better when it was like the Bath Party platform.
Yeah.
Oh but but yeah, I think that's a really good point. We are, Uh, he really has all of the It's funny because as Nicky Haley and Nikki Hally's last sort of hurrah, she was talking about spending, government spending, and I was like, I haven't heard a Republican talk about this in like five seasons.
No, it was, it was.
It was so quaint. I remember like that first debate, it's like.
Oh, tell us more about them. Before times Grandma was.
Talking about not spending money wastefully. Wow, that's like that's the earth I grew up on. What how into that planet? So I give her credit for that. Yeah, I don't give her credit for raising her and saying, well, I'll vote for him even he's a criminal. And did she say she'd pardon him or no?
Yeah, she said several times that She's like, we just have to put it behind us. I'm like, yeah, close the jail, Doring's behind us.
That's she seems to have gotten better lately. I don't know. Yeah, it's gonna last.
She's out now she's going.
Look, I know she's out, but I I but she was, she's she was actually getting close to saying the right things almost consistently.
And then she was like, and Joe Biden's bad too.
Yeah, Well I hope she. I hope she stays strong. I don't hold a lot of hope for it, though.
I Mean, I've just seen too many of these people join that cadre of broken men and women who oppose Trump and.
Then so befo him anyway, because Biden's communism, and then you end up being like a hollow shell of a man, like a Marco or a Ted.
Cran What about it, right, If I had to bet money on that.
Rudy, Rudy's on a hollow shell of anything. Rudy is.
Rudy is like Rudy is, he's he's just sloshing around.
Rudy is destroyed. Yeah, yes, listen, I would actually not actually full. I wouldn't even describe it as secrets.
I would describe it something on the lower shelf in the plastic jug wild No, no, not even wild turkey, like old Ocelot or.
All right, we have zero minutes left.
Yes, I'm going to break this up, this party, but it was absolutely amazing, all right, George Conway, No, no moment.
So it's now time for a moment. We're standing now for the moments of fu We really.
Wanted to and this whole time didn't we So we are in the moment of fuckery. For people who listen to my podcast, that's something we do there.
Do you do it in your podcast?
No? I do.
Who's on the enemy's list.
Oh and oh that's good.
I listened to your podcast, so don't. It's didn't make it sound it made it sound like I don't, but I do. Obviously, moment of buckery, you're gonna go first because you have real scorged earth.
Is Mitch motherfucking McConnell.
That is a man who, at two critical moments in our American history, had the chance to shut.
Donald Trump's ship down. He had the chance.
He said the right thing after January sixth, and when he said Donald Trump did this, he caused this, and you know what he did what he did this week?
Will hope to endorse Trump because of what don't you know? We'll hold full communism when Joe Biden is a Marxis socialist. And guess what This is a man who insulted Mitch McConnell's wife, who called her Coco chow, overtly racist, unbelievably destructive to McConnell's plan to hold power in the Senate, and yet all he cares about is the vestigial twitch reflex of maintaining a Republican Therefore, most vote for the guy is divorced from every single moral aspect of what Trump is and does. And for that, Mitch McConnell, is my moment of fuckery.
Nice.
That was very good.
Go girl, you're pretty good at this.
So my moment of fuckery is actually something I've seen now because I was interviewing Tammy Baldwin the other day, great senator from the state of Wisconsin running for reelection, good people, and she was saying to me, you know, they actually brought in a candidate who lives in California to run for the Wisconsin seed.
Well, it's like Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. He flew his jet down from his house in Connecticut.
I'm not kidding you, No, no, he really did.
And this is not even a joke.
They bought a house in.
A very fancy neighborhood, I know because they know one of his neighbors, and they fly their jet down there when Dave has to come down for events. They commute from Connecticut to run for US Senate in Pennsylvania.
But this is happening in.
Wisconsin, and he actually lives in a seven million dollar house in California. But these are candidates who are carbon baggers, but they're also self funded, and so I just wonder and again, we are going to see more reporting on this, but I just wonder how much of these self funded candidates are running because the RNC is having some trouble raising money.
It's listen, McConnell.
This was part of McConnell's plan for a long time was to get wealthy moderate Republicans to run and smash them.
Ag. Here's the again, going back to my moment of fucker.
The irony is that Mitch McConnell after twenty twelve said, oh, fuck these tea Party people, We're going to put more modern Republicans in.
Well.
That didn't work in the end of the day, but so then there the plan was, oh, well, we'll get these rich guys.
They're donor class guys. We know who they are.
They like money, we like money, and it made it easier for them to counteract the crazy right and also.
All and also all that money is going to Trump's legal bills, so you got to get bless them.
And that is our moment off the Great Well.
And by the way that it started, my experience.
Was we've done it. I know, We've done it.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.