Charlie Sykes & Josh Turek

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll released Monday said 33% of respondents approve of the president's job performance. He's on his way. Worse than Watergate, we have such a great show for you today. To the contrary, Charlie Sykes stops by to talk about Trump's self-inflicted wounds to his presidency. Then we'll talk to Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turrick about his very real chances of becoming Iowa's next senator. But first the news. Somalia, you know, I've been doing my due diligence on this podcast and always checking my gas before station, before, before. We're now almost at double the price of gas since the war started. Yeah, you will be shocked to know that closing the straits of Hermousse, which blocks, I think, about a quarter of all, somewhere between a quarter and a third of all, LNG, natural gas, oil, all of it, will make gas more expensive. It is amazing. You make, you put fungible gas, you make them have less, and then it gets more expensive. And Donald Trump is learning this lesson. 35% increase at the pump since the war began. I will remind you, no one knows why this war is happening. So it is pretty incredible stuff. 20% of the world's oil and gas flow through the strait. So that is a fifth. Driving the news, oil prices have surged $100 a barrel since the war began. This is insane. One month ago, gas was under $3 and Donald Trump was bragging about it a year before that gas was 370 and it is $4 a gallon. This is just wild. We have, and you know, it's five and a half for diesel. Prices are higher on the West Coast because it's further away. And, you know, this is just all, again, as we talk about with Charlie Sykes, all things that Donald Trump could have avoided. Had he not done reckless shit? So don't start a war in the Middle East. Won't make gas more expensive. You know, cause and effect, baby. Molly, it reminds me, like, when Trump was bragging about the gas being low, wasn't there someone else in a hearing talking about a marker, whatever they needed to change a subject? Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi goes to speak in front of the Senate. She is yelling at senators and she says, and this reminds me of that another great moment with JD Vance, where JD Vance yells at President Vladimir Zelensky. You didn't even say thank you. So Pam Bondi, in her infinite blondness, she is the head of the DOJ. She sits down there and she says, you haven't even thanked President Trump for the Dow at 50,000. You know where the Dow is now? It ain't at 50,000, let me tell you. It's like 45. The best is that chart where somebody points out where she said it and how it's just gone down ever since. Yes. Pam Bondi, the best to ever do it. Pam Bondi. Well, speaking of people who are very bad at predictions, Jim Cramer said that this is as low as gas is going to go, so we know it's going to keep going higher. That's right. Jim Cramer said it's all priced in for now. So we're in a lot of trouble, team. Yeah, as Jeff Balloon starts announcing added-on fees for flights and the other airlines are starting to follow, great stuff, great stuff. Yeah, the best. Speaking of great stuff, the Supreme Court did a decision today that is going to end up impacting a lot of people's lives and hurt a lot of very vulnerable people. They've rejected Colorado's conversion therapy, Pam. Yeah, I think it's important to remember, this is not just about conversion therapy, which is real bad, but this is also about a Supreme Court. That says states have rights except when it comes to things they don't like. So try to put your hat on for a minute and try to think of if this were Alabama and they were saying, we are mandating that schools have the 10 Commandments. Say this for a red state banning DEI, the Supreme Court would have completely signed off on it. So the point here is that as much as this is about conversion therapy, it's also about this very conservative court trying to limit what states can do. And that is really important because it shows just how partisan this court is that this court says Colorado can't do this, can't ban conversion therapy. And then they turn around and they say Alabama can do whatever it wants. And so, you know, there really is the only unifying theory of this Supreme Court is owning the lips. And so this is really about trying to just put this conservative legal theory into play in every which way and to own the lips. Smiley, I was watching Marco Rubio talk a bunch yesterday, did a lot of press. The word self-awareness really was not what it was giving. Play the clip. Play the clip. I have a clip to demonstrate my point here. Just give me a second to cue it up. I saw this clip. I love this. And at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that's happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great. Imagine in Iran that instead of spending their wealth, billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons had spent that money helping the people of Iran. You'd have a much different country. So we are always hopeful that that would exist over there. Yeah, it is incredible stuff because you'll remember that we spend billions of dollars on weapons and we could spend billions of dollars on health care and the arts and local news and all the things that would make our society utopian. My favorite part of this whole thing is that we could have been this had people just voted for the woman candidate. That is all. So to put a fine point on how ridiculous and unself-aware Mr. Rubio is as he runs around trying to look presidential, Caroline Leavitt, speaking to the press yesterday says the White House has opened a kicking 300,000 people off of health care to fund the war. Yes. I want to talk about how stupid this is for a minute. It's not even stupid. It's just craving. First of all, none of this is ever going to get paid for. So the idea that you need to kick people off to finance it, this is just not necessary. I mean, it's all necessary. But why start with this? Why start with that? This war is super expensive. I don't think we quite see how bad it is, but it's probably costing about a billion dollars, maybe more a day. There are all sorts of things that I have heard through the grapevine about how the spending is going in this admin. Like, for example, like the $220 million that Kristi Noem spent on horseback riding ads, like that's happening at the Pentagon, too. They're using very expensive missiles to shoot down these drones. They're doing things in ways that are way more expensive than they need to be. And also they want to kick 300,000 people off of health care to fund war. Caroline Leavitt refuses to rule out slashing health care funding to keep Donald Trump so ran war going. You'll remember that it's Caroline Leavitt and there you go. And so here we are. And ladies and gentlemen, it will continue to be very, very, very, very stupid. We're going to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very On the contrary, and the book How the Right Lost its Mind, Charlie Sykes, welcome, welcome. Hey, it is great to be back. It's great to be anywhere. And you. I feel that so deeply in my bones. Yeah, I know. We were talking about Donald Trump's wildly unsuccessful presidency by every metric, but I'm gonna read these numbers to you and like, and set you up here as we say. If a steady fall into the abyss for Trump's net approval, he is now at a term too low down, he's 18 points down. Big reason why independence, Trump's at negative 45 with independence. Worse for any president at this point in term two, worse even than Richard Nixon, at the height of Watergate. This is actually amazing. This is quite an achievement for Donald Trump. And I just wanna bounce something off of you. And some people might like recoil from what I'm about to say, but Donald Trump's second term presidency could easily have been politically successful if he had been remotely normal. If he had not screwed up the economy, if he had not imposed the terrace, if on immigration, he had just focused on actually going after, as he said, the worst of the worst and criminals, secured the border. If he had actually followed through on his promise not to engage in wars. But I think about what he has done to his own approval rating with the constituencies that elected him. And the extraordinary thing about those numbers is how he is cratering with Latinos, with working class voters, with young voters. And there are no, I'm sorry to use the term exogenous events that are driving this. This is all Trump's decision, these are his choices. He comes into office, the Democrats are demoralized, one institution after another is caving to him, the oligarchs are sucking up to him. You know, a normal president could have run with that. What did Donald Trump do? He has squandered the very constituency, the very coalition that he had assembled against great odds. And he squandered it with tariffs, terror on the streets and war. Those are all his own decisions. So this is, and I described this yesterday as kind of the chronicle of political self-destruction that we're seeing from Donald Trump. Nobody made him do any of those things. This all flows from his character and his choices, doesn't it? Yeah, there were so many times. And I think he benefited from this in his first term where Trump would say, I'm gonna do something crazy. And everyone would say, no, he's not. And you take him seriously. And people say, no, you gotta take him seriously. You have to take him literally. You can't take him technically. Remember that dumb, we spent months arguing with that woman from the Republican oppo, Selena Zito. Selena Zito. Yeah, wow, I haven't heard that name in quite a while now. Saying that you had to, he represented just a lot of really stupid discourse. And ultimately Trump would, re-helodicope. And some seeds, and that he would ultimately be talked out of it or the people surrounding him would tell me couldn't do stuff like, you know, whatever. Remember when he wanted to bomb drug cartels and they told him he couldn't. Or shoot protesters. Right, shoot protesters and they told him he couldn't. This time, he can just do that stuff and he does that stuff. That's right. No, it's hard to overstate how different Trump 2.0 is from Trump 1.0. And we knew it. We were predicting that this is not gonna be the same sort of thing. He's not going to have those guardrails or those grown-ups in the room. But I have to say that it succeeded our worst expectations because not only has he surrounded himself with yes, mediocrities, you know, male and female, but he's, he's surrounded himself with this sort of Greek chorus of people telling him, you know, do whatever you want. You are wonderful. You are the great liberator of the world. And so what you're seeing is a presidency of pure raw id. And how is it working out for him right now? And there's a disconnect and a cluelessness. That press conference he gave, that presser where he's supposed to be talking about what's happening in Iran. And he interrupts it for what he really wants to talk about. I mean, Donald Trump was bored with peace. He's bored with war, but he's super jazzed about the ballroom. And he wants to talk about the ballroom. I mean, how do you look at that and go, what is, you know, what ferrets are running around in that guy's prefrontal cortex? And there's a clip of him on the plane talking about the Doric versus the Ionic. You know, what kind of... The Corinthians, two Corinthians, best book. Right, the best book. Corinthians best pillars. Best column, yeah. And the optic of, you know, boots on the ground, which is this, we don't know maybe happening, maybe not happening. And oil, you know, I've seen Goldman Sachs have a very real conversation about $200 a barrel oil, which would be catastrophic. You know, it's already crude is higher, oil is higher, you know, gas, we're at $4 gas, which hasn't happened since, you'll remember, we haven't seen $4 gas since 2022. Right, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was temporary. Now again, go back to the fact that he inherits a really strong economy, right? He inherits a strong economy. And what does he do? Everything that's happening now is the result of Donald Trump blowing things up. The war in Iran was a war of choice. It was a war of whim. We didn't have to do this. None of this had to happen. And so we're talking about $4 a gallon gas. It could go higher. The alliance is completely shattered. The effects on the economy are going to ripple through. This is not something that Donald Trump can now just hit a switch and it will be okay, that it will go away. And the fact that, again, how strange it is, that clearly he wants to talk about anything other than what's going on, which would suggest that even though we've apparently won this war about 18 times, somebody should actually, should actually, should compile all the times we have declared victory in this war. It's sort of like people who quit smoking 150 times. That's Donald Trump. And I have to say, I did my podcast yesterday with Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, who used to use man, who fought in combat in Iraq, was the commanding general in Europe. And he was talking about all the problems of putting boots on the ground in Carg Island, in fact, the phrase he uses, he thinks the Marines are gonna be sitting ducks there. And the big question is, is anyone telling Donald Trump, is anybody warning Donald Trump about that? Well, you know who is warning Donald Trump about that? This is like the set of Dandle setups here. Laura Ingram, who said, I don't make that face, don't make, I didn't, I did not do it, but I'm just gonna read you what she said because I'm very smart. And also because I saw this on the internet and it absolutely struck me. Okay. Ingram, like many Trump allies, treats him like he lacks agency and is easily misled, which I think is important. Okay. So she says, for instance, was the president fully briefed about all the risks from this, from the beginning, and was he able to understand the complexity of this? So I think it is really interesting. Kind of fundamental questions. Yeah. Right, exactly. And also the other thing is that, so we had that, then we had the Wall Street Journal, also owned by Rupert Murdoch, just a data point here, saying that Trump had sort of talked to them and said, maybe we won't reopen the straights. You'll remember the straights are closed as a direct result of Donald Trump's intervention. Yes, they are. And what did he say this morning? He's basically trolling the Europeans in England, saying, well, you know, go get your own oil. Well, you know, so maybe he's, you know, one option is he gets simply declare victory and say, no, we don't even have to open the straight, which would mean that even while he's declaring victory, the whole world is looking like, what did you just do? Right. You know, there are certain prime directives in every administration. You and I have talked about this. And my disappointment with the Biden administration was, one prime directive is to prevent the return of Donald Trump to power. Okay, and that's number one. They messed that up. That was very difficult. But there's also a prime directive that Trump had, which is the prime directive of every president, which is do not fuck up the economy. You can do everything. If you get the economy right, you can get away with almost everything. So what does Donald Trump do? In his arrogance, in his hubris, he has managed to fuck up the American and the world economy in such a way that it's going to be hard to fix. And by the way, he's losing, you know, one ally after another. Do you see these recent developments? Spain has closed its airspace to the United States for its military operations, not probably a big deal. But now Italy has also done it. And Maloney was one of Trump's better friends, was willing to cut him a lot of slack. So you're seeing, you know, Europe turn against him one after another, which is why Donald Trump wants to talk about the ballroom rather than Iran. And apparently, by the way, yeah, it's going. No, I was just going to say to your point about Maloney, her defense minister was caught in, was caught in the Middle East because he had no heads up of what was happening. And so he was stuck there. Yeah, no. And so I think the whole world is asking the same sort of question. Now, you know, we always have that evergreen question. So when is the maga base going to break with Donald Trump? And let's be honest about it. I mean, the polls are not suggesting that's happening with the base. However, what is different this time is that the maga base is seeing and hearing this particular debate. And that's different because, you know, generally they exist in that alternative reality silo where none of the criticism of Donald Trump even penetrates. They don't even know about it. But that's different this time because you are getting voices like this. I actually saw some tweet. I mean, even Ann Coulter is breaking with him. When you have Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ann Coulter and they're attacking Fox News and you have Laura Ingram, there is a different dynamic here. And I think the different dynamic is people are thinking, this could turn really, really sour. This could go south. Yeah. Who's going to own it? He faced a political disaster before launching the war in Iran. I think it's gotten exponentially worse, especially because if Laura Ingram is asking this question, I mean, think how fundamental of it is. She'd be, because you know what? She's normally translated in English. Donald Trump, of any idea what he was doing, does he have any idea what he is doing? Kind of basic. Yeah. I also think, again, so much of this admin, you can see who's leaking, right? Like you'll see where the leaking is coming from. And it feels to me, and again, this is just a guess. This is not, but you, but I've been covering this chaos as have you for, since what I was in my 30s. Forever. And I was young, and my skin had this nice sort of give to it, which it doesn't have anymore. It sure looks like it. It looks good. You're looking good. Thank you. Well, I'm in the state of preservation here. But what's leaking, right? Who's leaking what? And it sort of feels like the Pentagon is leaking a lot. This is a very sophisticated take, because when you see these stories, you have to sort of reverse engineer them. How did this get out? And in whose interest is this leak? And you're seeing more and more leaks that are sort of designed to say, it wasn't me. We warned them. I want to cover my, you know, my ass. When this, in fact, you know, turns to complete bleep, you know, I want to have been, you know, on the record saying that I didn't do that. So you are seeing this. Now, you know, some of this may be people who are opposed to the administration in general, but I think it's also within the administration itself, because imagine being in the room. Imagine being in the room if you're a general or even if you're a reasonably rational person. And Pete Hegzeth is there. I sort of have this image in the Oval Office, you know, various, you know, sober counsel to the president about, you know, how we need to wind this down. And then Pete Hegzeth rips off his shirt and he's standing there on all of his tattoos and he's beating his breasts and saying, no, we must be lethal. We must be vicious. You know, we must bring down the wrath of God to guide every single bullet into the head of every single Iranian. I mean, the stuff that Pete Hegzeth is saying now. It's nuts. It is, I mean, it's for people who were alarmed about that weird extremist Christian nationalist streak, just read the kinds of things that he is saying, the prayers that he's saying. I don't think the summaries actually do justice to actually how unhinged this guy is. And, you know, he is certainly one of the people who has Trump's ear. Now, whether he's the only, and he's obviously not the only one, but why are we still there? Why are we still doing this? Who's telling Trump that this is a good idea? Besides Benjamin Netanyahu, MBS and Pete Hegzeth. You know, these are lives. Like these are lives. And ultimately, there are a lot of Americans going to the Middle East right now. And it does not feel like the, you know, we have this incredibly skilled military that has billions of dollars. But if the leadership is leading it into a quagmire or not listening to the top brass, which is certainly what it seems like from the way these leaks are coming and going, a lot of people could die for seemingly no reason. Well, exactly. What was this for? I mean, especially since Donald Trump has declared that it's all over and that we have obliterated the, we have changed the regime. We've obliterated their nuclear capability. So if your son or daughter is now being airlifted into Carg Island, what are they there for? What is the point of this right now? I actually had a, I won't say it was a heated debate, but it was intense. I was down in Dallas yesterday, as you know, at an event at Southern Methodist University, beautiful campus, by the way. And I was talking to somebody who was, I think they were Republican. I don't think they were a maga, but he was asking about like, how do neocons feel about Iran? Because if you're not in favor of, you know, if something like, you know, someone like, if you're not in favor of what we're doing in Iran, it's just because it's Donald Trump. I mean, you would be in favor of this. It's Trump derangement syndrome. And I pushed back and I said, no, I think that is exactly, this is a legitimate point that no matter how you feel about the war, it is legitimate to say, you do not want to go to war with this man. You do not want to put your sons and daughters' lives at risk under the leadership of Donald Trump. That Donald Trump is uniquely unsuited to be the commander in chief, uniquely dangerous as a war president. So it is not hypocritical and it is not self-contradictory for, you know, the hawks of the past to say, whoa, no, we do not have to go to war with this president. And I think that is playing out every single day. You know, with even Laura Ingram saying, does he have a fucking clue what he's doing? Right. I also do think that, you know, nobody has explained to us why we started this war. I mean, the regime is terrible, but so is what's happening with Putin in Russia and Ukraine. Like Russia just invaded Ukraine. I mean, like if you're talking about getting involved in a war and we did not get into involved in that war, which would have at least made a little bit more sense than just attacking Iran because they might have nukes, but they might not, but we didn't know, but we bombed them. So they're gone. I mean, you know, we did not get a real straight answer on why we were doing this. And also you have to articulate what victory would look like. No, one of the big questions is, what is Donald Trump's capacity for absorbing pain at this moment? I mean, he's all in bluster, but, and so far, and I don't wanna minimize the damage. I mean, so far the casualties have been held down. You know, one big incident will change the dynamic completely. Remember what happened in Afghanistan when we had a dozen troops who were killed in a single suicide bombing. I don't know what his capacity is. You know, part of his hubris is that he thinks that you can go in and one and done and it's easy. I mean, the fact that he keeps, remember he was, he kept mentioning Venezuela. You go in and you don't lose anybody, you know? It's clean and it's done. I think that he was so delusional that he thought the same thing would happen with Iran, even though anyone who has studied this issue would say, Iran and Venezuela are completely different cultures, completely different political environments. The military situation is not comparable at all. But also Venezuela, it's not like we went and did regime change. We went and took the president, put him and his wife in jail. Also, not entirely clear why, right? I mean, because he did a dance, because oil, because he's a bad leader, put him in jail, now have his vice president in charge. I mean... Right, right. But you know, let's go back to the fact, you know, that the Iranian regime are bad guys. And they are, they're a precedent and they're an evil regime. Well, so is Kim Jong-un in North Korea and Vladimir Putin in Russia. And these are two of Donald Trump's BFS. So really what we're seeing here is, and I was reading an article describing this as international gangsterism. You know, one of the entire points of post-war America and World War II was to rid the world of the international gangsterism of Germany and Japan. You create a world order that had some sort of stability. And what Donald Trump is basically saying is, no, let's go back to that. Let's go back to the international gangsterism. And so it's not a matter of principle. We're not a shining city on a hill. We're going to do with the other thugs in the world of have done it or getting away with it. And by the way, this story of the Russians giving the Iranians specific satellite targeting information of the American base in Saudi Arabia is I think somewhat underappreciated because Donald Trump continues to look the other way. The Ukrainians who have tremendous intelligence are saying, look, the evidence is overwhelming that the Russians are now giving the Iranians information to target Americans. I mean, how is this not, and how, and Donald Trump not blinking an eye. And he let the Russian oil tanker into Cuba when his whole thing was bucket. Yeah. Okay, by the way, now that's interesting because at some point, you know, we're like, nobody's bringing oil to Cuba. Nobody's bringing oil to Cuba. And at some point Vladimir Putin said, we're bringing the oil. You have a choice. You're going to blow up our ship. What are you going to do? And Donald Trump blinked. Donald Trump would not stop that ship. Nope. Charlie Sykes, I hope you'll come back. Anytime, anytime. Josh Turrick is a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from the 20th district and a candidate for Senate in the great state of Iowa. Welcome, welcome Josh. Yeah, thanks for having me. Tell us what you're running for. And give us like your background, how you got here. Sure, I'm Iowa State Representative Josh Turrick. I'm running for the United States Senate here in Iowa. I am the first permanently disabled member of the Iowa legislature. And I am the Democrat that represents the reddest district that was won on election day. The two communities that I represent in the Iowa legislature. Trump won Carter Lake by 18 points. And he won Council Bluffs, my hometown by 10 points. And I was able to win my district by nearly six points. I'm very, very proud of that. I'm born and raised in Council Bluffs, Iowa to a working class family, working class community. I went through a lot of economic adversity early in my life. Went to the Goodwill for a close. We shared clothes. Went to the Free Summer Lunch Programs. Had the wrong color lunch tickets. So in a deeply personal way, understand what so many Americans are going through right now with their economic struggles. I was born with a disability. I was born with a condition called spina bifida. It was due to my father's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. So I had my first surgery at one day old. I had 21 surgeries before I was 12. So also in a very deeply personal way, understand the importance of- I was born with a CACA. That's right. And I believe that healthcare is a human right. I had a very successful wheelchair basketball career, played in four Paralympic games. One back-to-back gold medals represented the USA in wheelchair basketball. I've been a director of a non-profit organization for disabled kids for quite some time. Got involved into politics because I was working in healthcare. I was what's called an Assistive Technology Professional. So I was assessing and providing power wheelchairs for individuals with progressive conditions like muscular dystrophy and ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, had found that Iowa, since it privatized its Medicaid system, was showing a thousand percent increase in denial rate. And then I'd found out that we had never had a permanently disabled member of the Iowa legislature. So decided to run. I won my first election by just six votes. I did that by every single day going out. Rain or shine, hard or cold, dragging my wheelchair upstairs. They have conversations with Republicans and independents and then turned around. And even though the Republicans spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on negative television ads in Americans, or prosperity spending hundreds of thousands on paid canvassers and mailers, turned that six-vote margin into a 6% margin and outperformed by 50% more than any other Democrat in the state. And what it's taught me is right candidate, right message with the right work ethic, we can win. And I'm running for the U.S. Senate because I'm only here because of the work of a great Senator from Iowa, Senator Tom Harkin, and the work that he did on the American Disabilities Act. And I think that this is a once in a generation opportunity that we've got here in Iowa to be able to once again have a Senator like Senator Harkin that's fighting for the people, fighting for Iowa and Iowans and fighting for social and economic justice. And we can change this state and change this country. You know, we had you on this podcast a year ago. I remember. By the way, I remember thinking, this guy's really good, but there's no way. Like I remember the, like this is one of the very few places where I interview a lot of electeds, right? From state house to, you know, we haven't ever had a dog catcher candidate on, but we would because we know the importance of running up and down the ticket, no matter what in every state. I mean, that's like my thesis. And it's not even my thesis, it's Amanda Littman's thesis. But when I heard you the last time I thought, this guy's really like, he's so good. And also your life has been affected by many of the actions of the American government, right? Your father was, you know, subjected to Agent Orange. It had this effect on you. You managed to just thrive. So, but it's funny because the world has changed so much in that year where anything is possible. Yeah, that's right. I think a year ago, no one would have thought that a state like Iowa would be in play a state that Trump wins by 12 points, but this is a fundamentally different state, different country and different race right now. I really believe that Iowa's gonna be the center of the political universe this year. I think it's the only state, the very best place to invest of where you're looking at being able to flip three congressional races. We can flip the open governor's race and we can win this US Senate seat. And it's for a couple of reasons. One is Iowa has bottomed out. We are dead last for economic growth. We are 48th for personal income growth. We're one of two states already in an economic decline. We are dead last for nearly every healthcare metric. We lead the nation in cancer rates and now we lead the nation in foreign foreclosures because of the tariffs. So we have bottomed out and I think sometimes you have to, like a state like Kansas, you have to bottom out before people are willing to recognize they need to go a different direction. Secondly, there's no power of incumbency here in Iowa. It's the first time since 1968, open Senate race and open governor's race together along with two open congressional races. And I think that people will look at a state like Iowa and say, well, that's a red state, but we're not. We're a common sense state that is masqueraded more red than what we are. We're a state that in Trump's first midterm, we won three of the four congressional races, almost one all four. And in our last midterm, which was not a good year for Democrats, 2022, we were only 1.5% away from having three of our six statewide officials being Democrats. And then additionally, I think 70% of this equation is quality of candidacy. Got a candidate like my battle tested, being able to win in the reddest environments. I don't come from a purple district. I come from a red district. And I know that there is something specific about my story, my background, my resume and my politics that has the ability to rise above this usual capitalism and connect with independence and moderate Republicans. And that's what it's gonna be able to take to win here in Iowa. And we do, we have a once in a generation opportunity to flip this US Senate seat and not only change the state of Iowa, but change this country. So I want you to talk to us about what are the numbers in your district, the one you represent right now, and what's the sort of partisan lean of the state? Yeah, the district that I represent, Trump won Carter Lake by 18 points, won Council Bluffs by 10 points. I was able to win my district by six points. It was a 14 point over performance. No other Democrat in the state did better than 10%. So it's a very, very red district. Statewide, you know, this is a state that Trump won by 12 points, but it's a very different state now. And Trump's approval numbers would put us as a D plus three state. Wow. Republicans and even my Republican opponent, Ashley Henson is now telling her donors that their internal polling is showing us as a D plus one state. So this is a fundamentally different state right now. And you're looking at, for example, Iowa won the congressional district. We lost that by a quarter of 1%. And one of the worst years have run as a Democrat. And so I think this really puts Iowa one, two, and three in play. We've got a great gubernatorial candidate, Rob Sand, that is showing up in the polls as well. This is really a generational opportunity. And I think we've got an opportunity here in Iowa to have a consistency in messaging and organized coordinated campaign where we raise the tides for all of us. Because I don't want this to be siloed. I don't want this just to be about, let's get Josh to the US Senate. I want this to about making fundamental generational change to my state and to my country. And we can, if we can win here in Iowa, we can get 251 in the US Senate and we can fundamentally change this country. So you guys are all elected officials who are either in the state ledge or, because we think of red states as not having any Democrats, even very sophisticated people like myself was not even that sophisticated. But, so the idea of picking people for these higher level jobs, not picking, but elevating people for those higher level jobs who have already served in the ledge, right? Yeah, absolutely. And even though we have been a red state for the last few years, we're a state that for 30 years elected Senator Harkin, we're a state that quite for Obama, three times for Trump, we've had a long history of having Democratic governors and as recently as 2020 had three of our four congressmen being Democrats. And so certainly as well right now, we have Rob Sand as our auditor. So it's not quite as red as people realize. Okay, I want you to talk us through the farm bailout because Donald Trump has yet again done another farm bailout, which I assume must affect you guys. Clearly the impetus for it is the polling. How is it being met there? Yeah, we've got a farm crisis here in Iowa, what I'm calling the farm again. We lead the nation in farm foreclosures. You've got farm suicides that are dramatically higher. These folks are upside down on their commodities prices. And this is directly due to the chaotic nature of tariffs. Also Trump decided to give $20 billion to Argentina so that China can buy the Argentinian and the Brazilian soybeans. Meanwhile, our Iowa farmers are upside down. It is a real, real crisis. Additionally, you've got input prices that are about a 100% higher. That's because of consolidation and not doing anything on antitrust laws. You've also got that that has been raised because of chaotic tariffs with China. And now what we're seeing with this war in Iran is it's also impeding fertilizers. And you've got a significant amount of Iowa farmers now that don't have any fertilizer and we're a month away from planting season. It is a real, real nightmare out there for the farmers. They're hurting, they're struggling. And I can tell you this, the area in the state that we're getting the biggest turnouts of card-carrying Republicans is in these rural communities among small family farmers. And they're saying the word we hear the most is betrayal. They're saying that we have gone out and we have supported Trump, we have voted for him. And yet this is what you have done. You go in these rural communities, they have been absolutely decimated. You go down these main streets and they are desolate like a vacuum's gone through there. And these are rural communities because of bad state and federal policy. They've lost their grocery stores, they've lost their pharmacies. We are closing healthcare clinics all over the state. In the last 15 years, we've closed more than 250 healthcare clinics and we have opened. We are dead last for nearly every single healthcare metric in a state with a growing cancer rate. And we're also closing our public schools and we're only doing that in our rural communities. These are rural communities and farmers that are hurting and it is directly because of bad policy. Yeah. I wonder if you could talk about what sort of you've seen in the last year before you came on this podcast. You know, we talked just a few questions about how the farming, the atmosphere has changed, the economy is definitely in a lot worse place than it was before the tariffs. But what else have you seen? Like, you know, part of the Trump's second election was this feeling that he was gonna sort of fix a lot of these other things. I mean, is there, you talk about betrayal, but like do you think they're sort of threaded the needle on him like immigration? Just talk us through these kinds of things. Yeah, I think that oftentimes you do have to bottom out before people are willing to recognize that. What I say when I go in these rural communities, I don't vilify them. I say, I understand why you voted for someone like Trump. He accurately identified that the status quo was not working for the average American and for middle America, for the middle class. But yet every single one of his policies have just made the situation worse from the Trump tax cuts, 84% going to billionaires. And from the big, beautiful bill, really affecting a lot of Iowans, especially given the fact that we're dead last on healthcare, 110,000 Iowans lose their healthcare, thousands more lose their basic food assistance. And then the ACA subsidies, 119,000 Iowans seeing their healthcare premiums double or triple. And what have I seen out there as I'm traveling state? I'm seeing healthcare clinics closed. I was just in a tumwe where they've closed their healthcare clinics. Now those folks are gonna have to drive more than an hour to be able to get there. I was recently in Northwestern, Iowa, where I was meeting with some young people and they were telling me that they don't believe that the American dream can exist anymore, that they're paying 50% of their income just on housing, that they've lost their ACA subsidies and they've seen their healthcare premiums and pharmaceutical costs go from $150 to $900. It's not sustainable. The thing that we are hearing by far the most, it doesn't matter where we go, urban or rural area in Iowa is that people are hurting. They are struggling just to keep a roof above their head, pay their electric bill and keep food on the table. It really is. And that's what I know that a message like mine, genuine common sense prairie populism that Tom Harkin made famous here for 30 years really, really resonates. This upcoming election more than anything, it's about affordability, it's about kitchen table issues, it's about a livable wage, affordable housing, affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals, supporting our public schools because Iowa was once number one in public education. We precipitously dropped doing something about the rising cancer rates that we're seeing, doing something about the water quality crisis because we've got the worst water, the most polluted waterways in the country here in Iowa and doing something about the corruption that we're seeing. And that's on lack of campaign finance reform and that's also the lack of ethics. I mean, it really is now in America. It's the habs and the have nots and we have had absolutely all Garkin. You can have oligarch your democracy, but you can't have both. And that message is really, really resonating with folks here in Iowa. They're recognizing that this state and this country needs change. So the place you represent, Council Bluff, that part of Iowa, you're popular there. How popular are you and how did you get elected there and how do you take that statewide? What I've learned in representing a red district, it's a simple calculus. It is right candidate and I believe that the candidacy is 70% of the equation. I know that there is something specific about my story, my background, my resume and my politics that really had this ability to resonate with the king makers here in Iowa, which is the 35% of the voting block that are independence and also moderate Republicans. I know we'll see someone like me, there's a genuineness and an authenticity coming from a working class family, coming from a working class community, overcoming all the odds that I have through hard work, not only to win gold medals, but to drag my wheelchair upstairs. That really resonates with folks in rural communities and farmers and moderate Republicans. Second is messaging. And I have been laser focused and very disciplined on messaging and that is just to focus on the issues that apply to the 3.2 million islands. And as I've said, it's a livable wage, affordable housing, affordable healthcare, pharmaceuticals, drinkable water, functioning public schools, infrastructure, doing something about corruption. It is genuine populism that resonates with folks. And then the last part is work ethic. For my state race, every single day rain or shine hot or cold, I went out and I drug my wheelchair upstairs. People appreciated that. And for the statewide race, it's the exact same calculus. I'm running on the exact same issues and you know, same person. And I know that we can win. And as opposed to dragging my wheelchair upstairs every single day, now it's a matter of getting around to all 99 counties, every single one of these medium sized communities, small communities, and going out there and talking about how I'm genuinely going to be out there, not looking out for the billionaires and not looking out for the large corporations, for the donor class, for the lobbyists, because that's all we've had here in Iowa is people like Ashley Henson that are just looking out for the donors and the billionaires and just trying to make herself four times more wealthy in the time that she's been in Congress. And I'm going up there because we need more people in DC from places like Council of Iowa with the lived experience, both economically and on the healthcare side, because when you've experienced it firsthand, you will have a different level of fight and a different level of empathy. And we need more working class fighters up there in DC. We don't need any more millionaires. I'm the only one in this race that is not a millionaire, both on the Republican and on the Democratic side. We've got enough people that come from wealth, that come from privilege. We need real fighters that come from real world conditions, economically and healthcare, because that's the people that are going to go up there and really fight to make fundamental change in our country. You got this endorsement from VodVets. It's unusual because you are not a veteran, but you have this story where you were affected by your father's service because you were born with spina bifida. I want you to talk about, it seems like a very meaningful thing, this endorsement. And I do think, it makes a lot of sense. So talk us through it. And I'm incredibly grateful for it. I come from a family, generations of veterans, both of my grandfathers served in World War II and the Navy. My father spent 22 months in Vietnam. It is due to his exposure to Agent Orange is the reason why I ended up with my disability of spina bifida. I get my healthcare through the VA because of that reason. I think that even my nephew, the next generation, served four years in the ME Coast Guard. I also have spent a significant amount of my time in adaptive sports working with newly injured individuals because one of the best ways to see genuine rehabilitation for these brave men and women that are coming back, missing arms and missing legs, is through adaptive sports. Also in the Iowa legislature, I've been ranking member of the VA and done an awful lot of work to make sure that we take care of our veterans. I say that we are way too quick to send these guys and gals overseas and we're not nearly quick enough to take care of them. Veterans suicides is still too high. PTSD, we still don't have enough supports for these individuals. And I think that, you know, I'm very, very grateful for VoteVets. I think what they recognized is this is the generational impacts that we see from conflicts like this and what I've seen far too much in my life are these forever wars. And we're spending a billion dollars a day over in Iran with no strategy, no idea where we're going or why we're there that is driving up oil prices, that is just making it harder and harder for the average American and the average Iowan to be able to make ends meet. And that billion dollars a day would certainly be far better suited to come here to Iowa because we've got closing healthcare clinics and closing schools and crumbling infrastructure. And I've never heard a single Iowan say that they wanna be in another forever war. And Iowans are already paying a dramatic price on this. We've already lost three Iowans in this conflict. Yeah, I'm very grateful for their support in this. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Josh. Absolutely. And now your moment of fuckery. Jesse Cannon. Molly Jungfest. So when we think about the Trump administration of the future, one of the markings really will be is this is when they all decided what are you gonna do about it with my corruption? And this headline is one of those ones that you almost wonder why no one did it before because they probably could get away with it. And then you think it's because people were decent and had some morals, just some. Yeah, so Pete Hexeth is like everyone else in this administration completely corrupt. Pete Hexeth's broker tried to buy defense fund before the Iran war. The report came after US President Donald Trump appeared to place responsibility for a decision to launch military strikes against Iran on defense secretary Hexeth. So let's pull back for a minute. There are a number of reasons why this is important. One, it's because Donald Trump is starting to understand that this war is going south. And so he's trying to blame people like Pete Hexeth. This is really important because it shows that he's losing faith in it and losing his spine when it comes to it, which is good. I wanna read to you a little bit from the story because I think it's important. So US defense secretary Pete Hexeth's broker attempted to make a big investment in major defense companies weeks leading up to the US Israel attack on Iran. So they knew it was coming. The Financial Times reported this. Financial Times is really bulletproof. The Pentagon calling the report entirely false and fabricated, which they do for everything. So very unsurprising. Hexeth's broker, Et Morgan Stanley, this is a big bank. A lot of us use it, approached BlackRock in February. So the fact that this guy thought that he could go to BlackRock when he represents, you know, like this is so clumsy. Like if you're gonna do crime and corruption, at least do it quietly, he wanted to make in multi-million dollar investment in the asset managers defense industry as ETF. And ETF is a bouquet of stocks that are in a particular sector. And this sector would be defense because Pete Hexeth knew America was going to war. This is coming out right after it happened. Imagine what else these guys are doing. Okay, we are the smallest mainstream media ever, right? Like we are teeny, we are understaffed. Nobody has any money, everybody pivoted to video, but nobody has any money. Reporting is really as thin and small as it's been. We're all working with these skeleton staffs, but we're still learning about stuff like this a couple of weeks into this war. And that makes me think that we're gonna spend the next couple of years learning about crazy corruption happening behind the scenes. So I think this is opening salvo in what will be just a plethora of corruption and fraud and people are going to jail. If we still have jails, which we might not because Trump may get rid of them for whatever reason, but if we still have a rule of law, people are going to jail. 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. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.