Rick Wilson & Bob Brooks

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In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Congressman Thomas Massey labels Trump's presidency the Epstein administration. We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the Epstein files effect on the MAGA coalition. Then we'll talk to Bob Brooks about his run to be congressman for Pennsylvania's 7th District. But first, the news. So, Molly, we are now seeing that all three people that ICE shot in Minnesota, they tried to cover up and lied about the incidents and that all three were unjustified shootings. Great stuff. Yeah, you'll be very unsurprised to know. And there was a really good article about this in The Times this weekend. Basically, ICE just lies about what happens. And so they said that three people were attacking the ICE agent and that this is the person who was shot in the leg in Minnesota and not murdered. And then it turned out they had actually detained. One of the people they had detained was just a witness, which who they had immediately flown to Texas. And I think that is a really important part of this. Anyway, this case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning they can't bring it up again. It's over. This is one of these things, just like with the juries refusing to indict, this is one of the places where our justice, our legal system is actually protecting us from ICE's extra legal adventuring. So that's really good news. And I'm glad that we're seeing some checks and balances. It's funny because it's like there's another place where like juries are providing checks and balances and normal people are providing checks and balances. And Jeff Bezos is just firing half of this newspaper because he wants Trump to like him. Yeah, I think it really is interesting what that New York Times article gets to is that like cameras are really one of the last saving graces. And if we were doing this 20 years ago, this would not look the same with us finding out what they're doing. And it really is a great tool of pushback towards these people. Yeah. And it's just a sign that like, well, a billionaires may be craven cowards. Normal people will stand up to authoritarianism. So to go along with that, a new report says that ICE jailed illegally 4,400 people and hundreds of judges have ruled against them. Yeah. And again, this is the same idea. You have a situation where the laws, the courts, the juries, the lower level administrators are using the justice system the way it's set up to. It reminds me of the six Democratic lawmakers who made this ad saying that if you're in the military, you do not have to follow illegal orders. How hard is that? Right. You don't have to do things that are illegal. That should be not a big statement. But instead, Trump World went after them. And what we're seeing is that they couldn't get grand jury indictments on that either. And they just have a judge who paused Pete Hegseth's war against Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Probably the best political fortune that Mark Kelly has ever come up to. Yeah, yeah. Right, like if there ever were a setup for running for president, it would be Pete Hegseth trying to get you court-martialed. Yeah, as he's flirted with that for a long time, this really is the best thing that can be done for him. So the Justice Department has listed hundreds of prominent people named in the Epstein files in a letter to Congress. Will you be shocked that there's a man who's president in there? This is like one of these ways in which the administration is trying to obfuscate. And what they did was this weekend, Justice Department lists hundreds of prominent people named in the Epstein files in a letter to Congress. So in this, this is like what they do when they released a lot of duplicate files with some redactions and some non-redactions. You know, this is just like trying to muddy the water. And in this list, it was a six page letter and it had a lot of people in it. It had basically people that I definitely know are not in there. A lot of Democrats, some Republicans, some people who are clearly in there. I mean, it just was like very much the kind of thing you do when you want to muddy the waters. What I thought was the most interesting part of this was that you saw like some of these Trumpy, Elani accounts like posting the list being like, see, Bill Clinton is in here. See, whatever. It's like if Epstein donated money to a campaign that's in there, you know, then that candidate is in there. It's just a lot of obfuscation. And the truth is, like, I think most of the people who worked with him should be maybe pressing charges against. I mean, there certainly was a lot of enabling and a lot of people getting away with things. But I also think that the fact that they're doing this in order to muddy the waters really shows they just don't really care about transparency. They don't care about the situation, you know, about finding accountability. they just care about covering for Trump and whoever else is in there. And remember, Thomas Massey has a list of 250 people, and that list was put together by the victims. And they have more than a thousand victims. So maybe you don't have more than a thousand witnesses, but you certainly have a lot of witnesses. And those witnesses certainly have a lot of names. And we know that there are a lot of videos that have not been released. So my question is, You have witnesses. You have videos. You have evidence. So why the fuck aren't you pressing charges? Like, I don't get it. And there's also the other thing, which is there are some really scary things in these files that, you know, it's not clear what's real, what's not real. And that's, of course, by design. But they should be investigating all of it. Like, if our government can't be against child sex trafficking, then what the fuck are they even doing? Like, that's an easy thing to be against. You know, this is not something controversial. Like, sex trafficking children is bad. If our government won't stop it, then why do they even exist? I cannot agree more. So one of the things that we keep seeing over and over again is the war on woke from the Trump administration, Molly. And one of the things I think woke really overstepped on was making clean air. And so the White House has done something about it. They're ending credits for manufacturers for start-stop features in cars. So this is like a pro-pollution stance, which is a little bit ironic when you think about like the big, one of the biggest donors of this administration is Elon Musk, who made all his money on pretending to care about the environment. This whole administration is like, it's a kind of nightmare scenario. It's so bad. It is so bad. It is so incredibly dark. And, you know, by the way, like climate change is still happening, even if it snowed in New York. Like this is not a tenable position. And also, FYI, like we have this power crisis and we could get it from solar, but we won't get it from solar because that's woke. And this is why we are in the stupidest simulation possible. Quite stupid. Rick Wilson is the founder of Lincoln Project and the host of the enemies list. Rick Wilson. Hey, Molly. How are you? Oh, living the dream. Living the dream. I feel your pain, friend. It's funny because we're talking about Trump world and we were just off camera talking about how it does feel like Trump has, it is really, the Trump base is really splintering. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're seeing it in the polling where that for years and years and years and years and years, it was that 35 percent that could not be moved. And now it's the 25 percent that can't be moved. And I think there's some stuff that's happened out there. I think it's the economy and his absolute botching of the economy. I think that's a huge factor. You can't unweigh that factor. And again, that's a problem that Biden world had, too, which was you can't tell people if people are mad that their groceries are now twice as much money. It doesn't matter what you tell them. They have their own lived experience. And, you know, the Biden administration said the same things to the Republican and Democratic voters that Trump is saying now. The stock market's doing great. And it was. Prices are coming down. And they were. But it didn't make people feel better because they didn't experience it in their day to day life. And with Trump now, I think it has sunk in now because you're starting to see these polls like who was a better president? People are saying Biden. Not by a lot, but by some. But consider how bad Biden's numbers were. Yeah. Striking. But I think that they had this weird sense that, you know, maybe it had started to turn the corner and then Trump did all this tariff stuff. Yeah. And that stuff is hitting very much in the face of a lot of conservative voters. There was an article in the Journal that, you know, Ford is closing the big EV plant they built in Kentucky. And as Andy Brashear said, those people all voted for Donald Trump. They all voted for Donald Trump. One of the things I struck by and we saw a lot of politicians go on the Sunday shows and talk about Robert Garcia has really been an effective messenger on this Yes We had these Pam Bondi hearings on Wednesday where she completely just you know she tried to do MAGA and women, you know, basically if you do a hearing, what Donald Trump wants is he wants a Brett Kavanaugh. He wants angry. He wants J.D. Vance. He wants yelling. he wants. Why don't you? Right. Why don't you thank President Trump for the economy? How dare you? 50,000! 50,000! And what I think is so important about that is that it's not available to women. And because our culture so I mean, it's not really available even to J.D. Vance. I mean, when he did it, it was a disaster, too. But it was like such a it just was very jarring, even to MAGA world. But Molly, I think what was very jarring to MAGA world, I don't wake up in the morning and think of them as like a flowing river of compassion as a rule. No. But I think Bondi's, the ugliness of Bondi's performance, I think the thing that really struck people on every side politically was she wouldn't turn and even meet the eyes of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. She wouldn't even look at them. And so I think you're right. That performative table tossing behavior. It's much harder for women to do that in our society as a rule. But it's even worse when you saw that Bondi's entire performance felt so calculated and so cruel. And those women behind there, folks, are the tip of the itty-bittiest part of the iceberg you can see of these victims. And Bondi was basically saying, here's my middle finger. Yeah. Yeah. It's also I mean, you have these old videos of Bondi saying, like, we're going to get sex traffickers. And then there's just the reality that, like, if our government isn't against people who sex traffic children, then what are they against? I it is. Apparently, they are against peaceful protesters. Right. Apparently, they are against anybody who who who dares to criticize the administration. You know, as we're seeing increasingly with their political enemies on their side as well. When Thomas Massey is told by the FBI, guys, we're going to come after you and your staff. Yeah. If you keep this doing this. I don't know. It strikes me that they that they that they have a lot of names on this list, the people who are still alive and active and powerful and wealthy. And every time Pam Bondi was asked about that, even when the questions were not tenditious or or pointed, the answer was, ha ha, there's an illegal immigrant in your district who once committed a murder. Right. No, I mean, it was the. worst kind of whataboutism, but I think it is worth just for a minute. Like when Magworld, after that performance, that Bondi performance, we did see a lot of members of Magworld saying she should resign. Yes. And this is the thing Trump has a problem with. So his whole thing is he's not going to fire anyone because he thinks it makes him look weak. Right. It makes the media win. Right. But here's the problem. If you don't fire anyone, then you never get a scapegoat. scapegoat. And she would be quite an easy scapegoat for some of this. And so would Stephen Miller. And so would, I mean, you know, there are any number of people you could throw under the bus here. And I just wonder if ultimately, if not doing that, FX is polling. Oh, look, I think I think we have reached the point where the blowback of Epstein is so deep into the Republican base. And a lot of them, they don't want to tell a pollster that they don't want to say it outright. but a lot of them have said it outright. A majority of Republicans do not believe Trump is being truthful about Jeffrey Epstein. That is a terrible indictment of this man. And I think you're right about the scapegoat problem. And I have a theory of the case, and you pointed this out on Twitter, I think, this weekend, that Tom Barack, who is now the ambassador to Trump, a very, very, very, very, very close friend of Donald Trump, one of his cronies, is not only in these files, but in a way that any rational reading of the communication between Barack and Epstein he'd be like, hello, what? I think he may have to find somebody, L.S. Wexner or Tom Barack, to say, you're off the reservation. That's the guy. That's the bad guy. Look over there. I don't think it'll work. I think the pressure in the system is building and building and building. But if you were advising this guy, I mean, let's just talk about this for a minute. If you were advising, if you were in this White House, if you were working with Susie Wiles, wouldn't you say, I mean, Howard Lutnick, this guy does nothing for you. He clearly did. I mean, CBS has reported that he had a business with Jeffrey Epstein. They signed an LLC together. He's clearly lied about. He lied and he's lying as recently as last month. He was lying about this. I'm sorry, December. Excuse me. Two months ago, he was lying about this. And he would be an easy one in a lot of ways. But he is also one of those people that Trump views as one of his ambassadors to Wall Street. Right. Which is not true. It's not true, but that's like that's like David. Trump thinks David Sachs is the genius of all A.I. Not again. Not true. But well, I mean, you can think a lot of things that aren't true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just wonder, like one of the things we see with Trumpism is that he rejects so much of this sort of traditional political. You know, if you are in a ditch, he keeps digging. You know, if you're and I just wonder if ultimately that is the smart play at this moment. I don't think it is actually, because, again, this is now transcended what feels like an ordinary political problem. This isn't like our tax bill is going to do this instead of that or our our trade policy is going to do this instead of that. This is now the entire administration is engaged in a massive cover up of a of the global pedophilia sex ring they always claimed was out there, which the rest of the world. I mean, like the king of England is like, investigate my brother. He's going to jail. To jail. But Donald Trump is like, no, Howard Leibnick is too important for him to even face any accountability. By the way, the guy has never fucking worked in government is like, OK, so I have cooked up a theory and I want you to talk me off the light. Tell me if I'm wrong. OK, because we often have these talks, usually not in the podcast. But, OK, my theory is that Democrats in the House should begin impeachment on Pam Bondi as a way to a so they can do it because they have a one seat majority. and all you need is one seat. You know, Republicans have a one seat majority. So you could get it going. You don't have to get removal in the Senate because who cares? It's all about the trial in the House. You get accountability on Epstein. You get to find out who's covering up for who. And you get real fulsome hearings and trials. I, Molly, I believe that without accountability, this will allow some of the worst actors in our politics and our business community to skate. And I think Pam Bondi, as Ted Lieu caught immediately the other day, she perjured herself before the committee and has done so repeatedly. She has repeatedly shown contempt for the Epstein Transparency Act. She's repeatedly engaged in obstruction of justice. They have her dead two rights. And I gotta tell you, I don't think you would have fewer than five Republicans who would say, yeah, you're right, because they're frustrated too. And this is a little friend of a friend, but I talked to somebody who talked to somebody else who does a lot of Republican campaigns in the House, like a big time consultant. And a friend of mine spoke to him over the end of the week last week who said, I'm telling all my guys, if it comes down to selling out Pam Bondi, sell out Pam Bondi. Her numbers for Donald's appreciation, 17% approval rating. Right. I mean, that's the reason why you pick scapegoats is because they ultimately politically help you. And that's what I think is such a strange little situation Trump has cooked himself into. Right. Because no scapegoats, no firing. No. But then ultimately, don't you take all the blame? If you don't throw someone else under the bus, the bus will come for you. If you look at the way Trump runs everything, Pam Bondi's his personal lawyer. She answers to one person. If he wanted this out, it would be out. Therefore, if he throws her under the bus, he's still going to take radiation from it, but maybe a fraction less. I didn't mean for her to do it that way. Yeah. So what is interesting to me about this run up to the midterms here, we're like nine months for the midterms. Tell me. Trump, I know, Trump knows that he has figured out that his polling is terrible, hence the SAVE Act. They don't have the numbers for the SAVE Act. As long as there's still a filibuster, they can't radically reshape federal elections, at least not yet. There's like a panic with Republicans. But I don't I just don't see this as I mean, it doesn't it seems like they see what's coming and they're really worried. They are beating. And in fact, that phone call I'd made to my former Republican friend was about the SAVE Act. I was kind of curious, like, what's what was what was his take on on where the Save Act was. And he said to me, what's interesting is they're doing all the right things according to the MAGA rulebook. They're flooding the zone on Twitter. They're pumping out emails. They're all going on Fox and trying to make the Save Act a thing, but the Save Act is not a thing. Well, you just don't have the numbers. You don't have 60 voters for it. They don't have 60 Republican votes. Even though Susan Collins has now said she's going to support it, that puts them at 50. It's a long haul between here and there. And I promise you, it doesn't take a lot of opposition at this point to derail this thing because Tom Tillis is going to be out there. He's going to he's going to say no. And I think you already know the same act is failing because Trump over Friday and over the weekend is like, I'll just do an executive order, which is not how any of this works. Right. And he already did an election integrity investigation, you know, executive order. I mean, OK. Yeah. Look, the problem of illegal aliens and illegals voting is a problem so small, you could put them all in a movie theater that happened every year. It's like 100 cases in the whole country every year. 100, folks, not 100,000. But none of this is real. I mean, this is all about Republicans worried about losing. And by the way, Molly, I think one thing that somebody pointed out last week, if the documentary evidence of who is an American citizen requires two pieces, a real ID, driver's license, and a passport, or a certified birth certificate, the people who have passports are not voting for Donald Trump's candidates. No, they certainly are not. Those of us with a worn out passport are generally speaking, not Trumpers. So this may end up being like the Texas redistricting. It may be something they think is really clever on paper and turns around and bites them on the butt in the end. Let's talk about the Texas redistricting, because this is just so Trump says to Texas says to Governor Abbott we want five districts Governor Abbott says happily sir we got five districts The problem is Donald Trump did really well with Latino voters before he started arresting all of them. Rounding them up and putting them in warehouses and shipping them back to a foreign foreign country they didn't come from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's working out well for him. Yeah. And like Florida, where they have a Democratic mayor in Miami for the first time in 21 years. Talk us through that. Look, there is a congressional seat 27 in Florida, Avira Maria Salazar, who is a Trumper in a district that went for Trump bigly, as Trump would say, in 2024. And then they started taking all the Cubans and Venezuelans off of temporary protected status and started deporting them. And they're going to deport 300,000 people. Now, these people are not voters, y'all, but their family members who lived here in America all are. And their friends and their relatives all are. And it has caused this huge blow up in South Florida. But this is replicating across Texas, across Arizona, across Florida, in North Carolina, which has a surprisingly large number of Hispanic immigrants. New Mexico. Yeah, New Mexico. It is blowing up all over the country. And our buddy Mike Madrid the other day was just going through these numbers. And that advantage Trump had in 2024, because he got Hispanics into this frame where he was going to make the economy bang and do great for them. It's gone. It's over. They've not only flipped back to their median, where they've always sort of been politically, they've gone further towards the Democrats. I don't know about you, but I don't think in nine months Donald Trump is going to turn this ship around. Well, the billions of dollars that go to ICE, that's to target them. I mean, And it's also to target any other group of people. But the real I mean, when you have Kavanaugh stops, right, where you're allowed to stop people because they look a certain way, they are not stopping them because they look super white. No, no, they're not. And by the way, I know, as we've all talked about, he doesn't like the word Kavanaugh stops. So that's why I like to say Kavanaugh stops as often as I can to remind people that Kavanaugh is responsible for Kavanaugh stops. Listen, if you're a Supreme Court justice and you say that racial profiling is OK and you're Justice Kavanaugh, then it's a Kavanaugh stop. Yep. Yes, it is. And then that gets us to the moment where we are in right now. We see Trump is unpopular. We see what do you think Democrats should be doing at this moment? Because we're already getting into what should Democrats do world, which is very annoying. I want to keep reducing this down to the simplest possible formulation for Democratic candidates that are out there. people are hurting economically like crazy. Okay. And so the phrasing that I like to use when I talk to Democratic candidates that I want them to go out and say is, this is crazy. Trump is doing this. We're going to fix it. That is not a policy paper. That is not a long disquisition about what you want to do about climate change or tax rates or any other thing under the sun. It is a straightforward, here's the problem. Here's the cause of the problem. I am the solution. They need to be the solutions to this problem. They need to be saying right away, we're going to kill these tariffs day one, hour one, minute one in Congress and get the economy moving again. We're going to stop this corruption in the White House and get the economy moving again. We're going to stop the sweetheart deals for Trump donors and get the economy moving again. We're going to stop AI companies from getting handouts so that ordinary Americans can instead of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. I mean, this is an easy lift right now because Trump's insanity is self-promoting, self-fulfilling, self-defining. Democrats saying we're going to be the party about getting the economy moving and fixing these problems and making your life better. It's not about prescription drug policies. It's not about anything like that. People want to be spoken to in the language they speak at home, not in the language we speak in Washington. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think affordability is a good way to focus and was good to see AOC out there and Munich Security Conference trying to get that message out. I mean, she and Newsom, I think both at Munich, did a very credible job of not letting Republicans own that space. I mean, Gavin Newsom basically saying California is going to have our own foreign policy if these idiots won't. Okay. I also thought watching Marco out there. Oh, that was a presidential. That was his presidential opener. Right. Last year, J.D. Vance went out there and yelled at them. This year, Marco was out there trying to do J.D. Vance, but without the slightly less obnoxious. It was, I'm still going to be a dick on Donald Trump's direction, but I'm going to nod and wink to you. And he was trying to contextualize a lot of it in a way that spoke to the white supremacy group. You know, like our special culture. Nudge, nudge. Not those other people. Pay no attention to my last name, Rubio. Right, right. Pay no attention to the fact that Marco will be on the list, you know, as soon as the Nick Fuentes purges begin. Well, women too. So, Rick Wilson. Bob Brooks is a candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania's 7th District. Welcome to Fast Politics, Bob. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Tell us what seat are you running for and tell us a little bit about that. So we're running for PA7, which is the Lehigh Valley. It is Northampton County, Lehigh County, Carbon County, and a piece of Monroe County. So it's a wide area. It's a big, big area, mile-wise. Sometimes it's 45 minutes or so to get end-to-end. Or, you know, I live kind of in the middle, which is good. Helps me get to all the different places. It's a congressman, Ryan McKenzie, who was the congressperson there? It is. Yeah. Congressman Ryan McKenzie is in the seat now. It used to belong to Susan Wild before that was Charlie Dent. Yeah. So it is a centrist Republican seat. It has been. Yes. For a while, Charlie Dent retired, actually, to open up the seat. So that's when Susan walked in and ran and won, flipping to more of a Democrat seat for a while. But then it flipped over in this last election. So it's a swing seat. It's a swing seat, yeah. Yeah, and tell us what made you decide to run, because you're not a career politician. I am the hardest thing from a career politician. So I started looking at the scenario and what was happening, and I'm tired of being kicked in the teeth. I'm just tired of waking up every day to new crazy. It doesn't seem like the representation that we have in Washington is representing me. I am an everyday working class person. And I'm in the point right now where I just pray it doesn't snow because as also being a firefighter for the last 20 years, I am a small business owner, an almost smoke bomb business. And it really, really hinders everything we're trying to do here. So I got a few phone calls in the middle of this. One, it started with Chris Deluzio. He's congressman from all Pittsburgh area and good friend of mine. You know, people I know called and said, hey, would I be interested in doing this? And I looked at the field and, you know, there's there's big fields. So a big field of candidates running in the Democratic primary. OK, yeah. Yeah. So I decided we needed more working class people. The biggest call I got was Governor Josh Shapiro called me into a backroom meeting. And, you know, so I think you'd be really good at this and I'd be willing to support you if you decide you want to do this. And they gave me some numbers to look at and some information to see. And I made up my decision after talking to my wife and my family that we're going to do this because we need change. The status quo in Washington is not OK with me. And if we're looking to keep status quo, then, you know, I'm not I'm not the vote they want to make. And I don't think anybody wants that anymore. So what does it look like in this race? Tell me about the primary. I just learned today we're not the biggest one out there. There's one with 15 down in Maryland, I guess. All I can do is concentrate on Bob Brooks or Congress. Right. So no matter what everybody else in this race is doing, we put our heads down. We're raising the money we need to raise. We're getting the support from all over the board. Again, like I mentioned earlier, we have Governor Josh Shapiro's endorsement and we have Senator Bernie Sanders endorsement. And in between that, you know, we have Val Hoyle, Ruben Gallego and Pete Buttigieg. The coalition that we're building is people that are tired of the status quo. So why are they endorsing you besides your charm? Why are all of those people endorsing? Because they all need change. And again, it goes back to status quo and the bullshit that is happening down there right now and the money that is in politics is disgusting. And I think they look at me, see, I think it's for different reasons, quite honestly. I think Senator Sanders liked me because I agreed with him on working class people. We fall in line in the same area. And when it comes to Josh Shapiro, that man knows how I work in Harrisburg. I've been out there, I've passed legislation. Oh, because you were state rep in the state? No, I'm a state president. I'm sorry, I didn't even go there. So I am the president of the Pennsylvania Professional Firefighters Association, which is the union that handles all the paid firefighters in the Commonwealth. I was a local president in Bethlehem for a local 735. And a few years ago, I made the jump up to the state level. And I'd been working in Harrisburg to pass legislation for first responders, both police, fire, and teachers get grouped in with us also for years now. The biggest one that we passed was post-traumatic stress coverage for first responders. And I can give you a guess of who my biggest opponent was when he was a statehouse member, a guy by the name of Ryan McKenzie. Oh, wow. So this is really personal and interesting. I have personal stuff for this guy. He finally voted yes for it in his last year before he moved on to Congress. But that guy fought us. He was a lapdog for Jim Cox for years. And now he's just a little hepdog for President Trump. So interesting. A lot of times union leaders are not friends with government because it's a lot of negotiating. So tell us how you worked with government to negotiate union pay, etc. So it's a different level when you're talking about the local level and dealing with local politics and the mayor and negotiating contracts is a completely different animal than trying to negotiate legislation. So I've been able to, that bill that I told you about is just one of a few that I've helped pass here in Harrisburg. But I've also worked with the international in D.C. on some legislation that we got passed. I believe I'm the only one in this race that has passed any written and passed any legislation. So even though I'm on the union side of it, when you get to the state level or the international level of legislation, you have to learn to work with both sides of the aisle. We were able to get that bill out unanimous. we had everybody, one guy, there was one guy, but he retired shortly after. So we couldn't attack him that voted no. I'm giving mental health coverage to first responders. It's crazy. But if you look at it, we had a Republican senator running the same bill as a Democratic House member. That was General Mara in the House and Cameron Bartolotta in the Senate. And I was able to pull them all together and use all the tools that we had to negotiate this deal and get it because it wasn't like everybody was on good with it. You know, we had the Pennsylvania Missile League. Well they wanted to see things And you know so it a matter of working together and being able to have a conversation agree to disagree on something and move on to the next point and then go revisit And that what I been able to do now for years Again, at the local level, we've been able to talk to city administration and come together to contract. If there's not, there's a process and the process takes you to arbitration. So there's a process at the state level. You have to be able to have conversations with people and then go have a beer or dinner later and let those conversations be then. and then work towards something in the future. And that's what I've been able to do now for years and what has put me into the position and made the relationships that I have to get all these people behind me, you know. So Pennsylvania is a really important state for any number of reasons. It's a purple state, but you have a very popular Democratic governor. Governors are a job. So talk us through why you think he's so popular and talk us through how you think he's done that. So I think Governor Shapiro is so popular because he works with everybody. And I like to consider myself a Josh Shapiro type Democrat or a working class Democrat. And that's why I think he relates to people. And that's what I'm trying to do is just relate to people and their needs and what's going on at home. He takes on the fight. He knows what the important fights are and he's willing to take them head on. Doesn't pass the stuff off. He gets shit done. And that's his line, right? That's his line. Josh Shapiro like to get shit done. So I've adopted that to a point. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel when somebody's got something and they're supporting you and it's working. Why change it? This district that you're running in is big with a lot going on. Talk us through what you're seeing when you talk to people in the district. So again, you talk to people and they're sick and tired of the status quo. They are sick and tired of these Republicans making when it's the hard vote time, like Ryan McKenzie, he votes for the big, beautiful bill. But then two weeks later, he's voting for a discharge petition to extend the ACA. Like, like people aren't dumb. They're playing people for being stupid. People are not stupid. They're just workers. And that's what the district is made up of. People that work in all different avenues and all different fields. And they just are tired of not being represented. And it's clear as day. And it's going to be even clearer, unfortunately, when their health care starts to skyrocket. Who made that vote? I like to use a little line that he's like the arsonist that started the fire and then called the fire department 10 minutes later. It's too late. He already started the fire. And that's what he did with the big, beautiful bill vote. When you talk to people, what are their biggest concerns? It's the grocery store. It's their wallet. It's affordability. That's the magic word of the week, right? Affordability. But it's everything that comes. I think affordability is this giant umbrella. And when it comes down to it, like the wealth inequality in America is crazy. And we can fix that with a new, you know, rewriting the tax code and just taxing the people. I'm not saying it's nothing wrong with earning a living and being rich and making yourself money. But at the same time, there's no reason I'm paying a certain amount of money and Elon Musk is not. If you just rewrite the tax code and get these people to put in their portion, it covers a lot of the things that people need down down here. I don't think there's much of a middle class left. They like to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Right. And I've worked. I've been through what a lot of these people and that's what I get to talk to people about is I've lived the life that a lot of them have lived. I've taken SNAP benefits. I lived in public housing when my mom was a kid to my house burned down. I've gone through what a lot of these people are going through, and that's what they can see themselves in me. That's what I think I get to talk to them about. Did they talk about Musk? Did they see the Trump stuff? Did they put it together? They're putting it together. So the Democrat Party has watched people like me walk away from the party in droves for years, and they left because they felt they were misrepresented and lied to from the Democrat Party. I'm hearing those same people with the same feelings that drifted to independent or drifted to right. They feel duped and they feel lied to. They're not wrong. So I think they're really having trouble with either party at this point in trying to figure out where they belong. And they're looking for somebody like me to represent them in their issues. So that's what I'm seeing when I'm talking to people. That's the vibe I get from people. Those that did drift are now looking for somewhere to go. Enter me. I can give them that opportunity. It's somebody just like them. Not like you said earlier in your statement, I'm not a career politician. I have done some politics from the union side, which helps, I think. But my ability to work with the other side, they're looking for someone who's willing to go down there and work with everybody. I don't think we're that much far off from people like that. We can't talk and work through things. The divide that is driven, the wedge that is being driven in by the Trump administration itself is to keep people apart. and to keep them from working together. I think I'll scare them. And I think the people around here are looking for that. Do you see like MAGA flags as much as you did the first time? No, they're there. There's people there. There's still a red hat here and there. But I mean, the first time around, it was everywhere. Like you couldn't avoid it. And those that put it out, put 10 of them out. You know, now it's like those that put it out have one. They have a flag. You I drove by a certain area that used to be really, really red, and I drove through, and I saw one flag the other day hanging out. It said, you know, Trump 2024, and that was it. Does anyone ever ask you about Epstein? Oh, yeah. More importantly, the guys in the firehouse, I think a lot of them drifted right based on Epstein. They wanted transparency. They wanted to see everything. They are pissed. They are really, really angry that these assholes are keeping the Epstein files locked up. So they were sold a bill of goods and they are realizing that exactly what it was, a bill of goods. The people in the firehouse are not happy. I write a lot about that case and I think a lot about how it is. It's the story of like the worst thing that anyone could ever do. I mean, Trump himself spent years getting people excited about QAnon in his own way. And then it turns out when it's actually happening. Again, this is with just about anything they do. They're doing it right in front of their face. They're not even trying to hide it. They're just like, yeah, we're not telling you. And that's that. And why are we not telling you? Because we're all in it. Like we're all part of it. We were all part of this thing. So I don't know that they thought it would ever get to this point where they would have to release them by court order. But even now they're playing the games and how they're releasing them, what they're releasing them. And, you know, eventually it'll come. I just hope it's not too late. We're talking about people that were children here. You know, it's children and it matters when you start talking about children and women. And, you know, it matters to people and they are they're mad. They're angry. Yeah, it's absolutely true. If you get into the house and you feel that house leadership is not acting aggressively enough, will you push to challenge leadership? because one of the things I see is once people are there, they just kind of want to get along. Yeah, not me. If I go and they don't like me, they'll primary me. Right. I mean, it is what it is. They know what they're getting. I'm not hiding. I'm telling them outright. Like I expect people to act a certain way when I get there. I expect these things to be pushed because that's what I'm telling people here. I will push and I'm going to push. And if they don't like that, I mean, I don't know how you can not push. I mean, Ro Khanna has been a big pusher, Right. He's been joined up with Thomas Massey and he's endorsed this campaign also. So I know I have friends waiting for me, if that makes sense. You know, people that want me to push with them. So I think I think it'll be fun. I don't say it'll be fun, but it's going to be interesting. Yeah. If you get there, it's going to be good. Yeah. Yeah. If we get there, I don't know. We're going to make some noise. I've never been shy in my life. Thank you so much. Great to talk to you. Great to talk to you also. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And now your moment of fuckery. Rick Wilson. Hey, Molly. What is your moment of fuckery? My moment of fuckery this week is Pete Hegseth banning U.S. military members and Defense Department employees from going to graduate schools at any, well, good university. So he has banned them from going to places you might want military officers to go to, like, I don't know, MIT, University of Chicago, Yale, Harvard. Yeah, he apparently thinks that they can just do like PragerU online instead of actually going to a legitimate educational institution, including Georgetown, George Washington. I mean, everywhere. It was a long list, about 35 colleges. And all of them, if you're a parent, you'd be like, I'd like my kid to go to one of those. Yeah. My favorite part of this whole story is that Pete Hegsatz, you may remember, went to Princeton. Yes, he did. And to Harvard. Yes. Correct. So apparently the wokeness didn't get to Pete. If only it had. Jesus Christ. It's like a nightmare scenario. Like I said, they're going to do PragerU online. It's going to be great. The best. Rick, thank you. Of course, of course, of course. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds in 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. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying. And drugs. So no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard. Getting them to listen to Hot Gossam is easy. So here's some drama you could share with your kid. Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake? No, but did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development? Nuh-uh. You don't need to gossip if you want to have an open conversation about vaping. So if you want to get tips on when and how to talk to your kids, visit talkaboutvaping.org. Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.