Anne Applebaum & Michael Tomasky

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts, then add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 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 a Reuters Ipsos poll found that 68 percent of Americans do not believe Donald Trump's State of the Union claim that the U.S. economy is booming. We have such a great show for you today. The Atlantics and Applebaum stops by to talk about Trump's attempts to tell the American people up is down and down is up. Then we'll talk to the New Republic's Mike Tomaski about what Democrats should be doing to continue to highlight Trump's ties to Epstein. But first, the news. Smiley, I would say Mike Johnson's majority is hanging by a thread, but a thread might be a little much of an exaggeration right now. So we have Tony Gonzalez, who is facing a world of fuckery with his accusations. His district office staffer set herself on fire after he harassed her and had an affair with her. Texted her truly. Things that I did not know adults text. Well, maybe I knew adults text each other, but it really was unbecoming. Anyway, so now we have learned that in a room full of GOP donors at a party retreat, that Florida Rep Neil Dunn has a terminal diagnosis, but is going to try to stay in office and make it to his terms. The end of his term. Yeah. Which means he would need to make it until and if he doesn't, Republicans have a one seat majority right now. So there's a world in which they lose the House before even the election. I think it's unlikely, but it's certainly possible. Yeah. And it just seemed, you know, we saw we discussed Mitch McConnell last week having a senior moment and then taking a fall. And it just seems real, real grim over in those parts for these days. They really are hanging on by very little. Yeah. I mean, Mitch McConnell's in the Senate, but certainly there are very old people in the House. Unfortunately, there are also very old people in the House on the Democratic side. And by the way, in order for Mike Johnson to win things, he needs all the votes in order to pass things. So they really have a numbers problem in the House for Republicans. And it means they're not going to be able to pass other stuff. And remember, this very scary SAVE Act, which is this act which would make it so that if you're a woman who changed your name when you got married, you basically can't vote. The only way to pass that is with 60 votes and they don't have it. They would need to get Democrats or they would need to block the filibuster, which seems very unlikely. Yeah. OK, so today Bill Clinton testified just as Hillary did yesterday and seemed like they got to see the same Hillary we saw when she did testimony on Benghazi. But now Jamie Raskin says it's letnick time, baby. Yeah. Here's here's the story about that. And again, I think it's important to remember James Comer, who's the head of the Oversight Committee, is not very smart. You know, he thinks that he's doing himself some brilliant term here, having Bill and Hillary speak. Like conservatives are obsessed with the Clintons, but realistically, I don't think that normal people care. Right. Like she's not running for president. He's not running for president. That dynasty is over. So I don't know. Like, I understand that it's fun for them and I understand that there's like a contingent of people who really hate them, but they don't have a lot to do with the Democratic Party writ large. What Comer fails to understand is that he's setting a new precedent here. So if you can have Bill Clinton testify, that means, remember, so much of D.C. is about norms and not laws, right? Like you don't go after former presidents in this way. You don't have them in congressional hearings because these are norms, but it's not against the law. You've had Bill and Hillary. And that means that you can have Trump. You can have Don Jr. You can have all the kids. You can have Melania. You can have the whole kit and caboodle because you've set a precedent which says, you know, Melania is more implicated in the Epstein files. There's that nice email, this very friendly email she writes to Ghislaine. You know, Hillary doesn't have that. I mean, I do think, by the way, that if Hillary and Bill are culpable in any way, that for sure they should be held responsible. And if they're if it's found that the money that Ghislaine gave them was involved in starting the Clinton Global Initiative, that probably should go. So I'm not in any way signing off on their involvement here. I'm just saying it sets a precedent like Letnick, Letnick's wife, Letnick's kids. Like you have opened the door to a lot of oversight that I don't think Republicans necessarily want. Yeah, especially after that picture of Howard Lutnick looking like a Backstreet Boys video on Epstein Island. But we do see that Trump said that Lutnick is a very innocent guy. And Maxwell Frost has a reply to that, which is that he is asserted many times that he knew nothing of Epstein's crimes. How can he know for sure Lutnick's a very innocent guy? Yes. And even before that, Trump said, I've been fully exonerated. That's his favorite thing to say. He says, I've been fully exonerated. Lutnik's very innocent. Meanwhile, the DOJ pulled a picture of Lutnik and his kids off the Epstein files site, which is not something you do when you're very innocent. Or maybe it is. I mean, that's the thing is like the cover up is becoming bigger than the crimes. And so it's just the fact that they're behaving in a way that seems very, very, very guilty strikes me as a pretty good sign that there's where there's smoke, there's fire. Agreed. So the Democrats are demanding $1,700 tariff refunds for Americans. Yeah, they're not the only ones. And there are a lot of companies, like hundreds of companies suing this administration now for tariffs. And I'm not sure Trump understood that this is coming, but the Supreme Court now said they are illegal. And now that means that if they're illegal, that means that you can get that money back. This is all like this thing that Trump does with the unintended consequences, which is like puts these tariffs down. The Supreme Court says they're illegal. That means that money has to go back to people. So, by the way, it's important to remember, like Trump has fired a huge swaths of the federal government. So now you have less people working on more stuff and he's constantly making more and more stuff for people to do. I think that it's just, you know, we saw Pritzker out of the gate being like, you owe each Illinois resident seventeen hundred bucks or whatever. This is a good thing for Democrats to run on because it's so stupid. here's Trump doing stupid crap and Democrats have an opportunity. You know, they can just say it's making life more expensive for people, which, by the way, you know, I just want to go back to Trump's State of the Union on Tuesday. There are these dials that people turn to measure sentiment. You know, they have a group of watchers and it tends to be more Republican, at least for 38 percent more Republican. Right. They're watching it. And when he would say the golden age, the sentiment would go down. They didn't like the golden age. And it's hard for me to think of a phrase that more invokes Trumpism. And it's just striking to me that that is where people were like, no dice, because I think historically, if you looked back on that, that phrase has done really well for him. And these changes happen slowly and then quickly. And and we're in the middle of watching a big change. It's a great, great point. So, Maya, I will tell you, last night the news broke that Netflix is dropping its bid for the Warner Brothers deal and Paramount would get it, giving the LSNs control. I've been dying to know what you think, but I think it's very interesting that Rob Bonta, the attorney general we've had on from California before, is... Frequent guest of the show. Yes, it's saying, ah, that's so fast there, chief. Yeah, I mean, look, it would be malpractice for Democrats not to be all over this. There are a couple of things that I think it's worth just pointing out about this. First of all, this deal is really expensive. The reason that Netflix dropped out of it may have been because Trump, you know, gave them a hard time. But it's also because it's really expensive and they see that the Ellison's are overpaying here. Now, it's also important to realize, like, Netflix wasn't even going to buy CNN. And CNN has gotten really small. And I know that there are a lot of people who think CNN is really important. And I understand that. And I don't disagree. Look, I am a I work for MSNBC. I get it. But I just think there would have been a cheaper way to get CNN, which would have been to let Netflix buy this and then spin out CNN and buy it that way. And the fact that they're doing it in this wildly expensive way when Larry Ellison stock itself is down. And I know he's very, very, very rich and he can, you know, just like Elon, he can, you know, throw the balls in the air and service the debt. But if you look at this deal, it has a huge amount of debt, like crazy levels of debt. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe David Ellison is very, very smart. There's not a lot of evidence to support that, FYI. And also last year he was just like running a studio no one had ever heard of. So I just think Larry has done this before with his kids. he did this with his daughter. It was a disaster. I'm not convinced that this ends well. That said, there's also just a ton of regulatory hurdles that can be put up here. And they should be because it's a monopoly and there's antitrust stuff here up the wazoo, right? You own all these news networks. They'll own, you know, whatever, two studios. There'll be a huge amount of jobs lost. Democrats should put regulatory hurdles in there. States should sue. The California AG has some jurisdiction. And then the other thing is that I think that this is going to take a long time. So Trump may not be the freewheeling autocrat. You know, if the midterms happen the way they're supposed to happen, Trump may not have the kind of power and control he has right now. And so this may all not go through. So, again, who knows? But I wouldn't say it's I don't think that people should treat this like the end of the world. I think it's bad and it's certainly not good, but I also think there are reasons that may work against it. Yeah. And I think it's very interesting that, you know, when everybody's saying they're going to take it, CNN and make it Fox News, it's like there's not a market for this. There's a reason these networks don't have it. If the Ellicott's try to do that, they're going to lose a lot of money. Yeah. I mean, they're doing it with CBS and they don't seem to care. So I'm not convinced that they won't do that. I think they might try to do that. But I think that like when you see with CBS, like they've done that and they're down 25 percent. So you don't have a captive audience. And even TikTok, isn't TikTok down people using TikTok? Yes, that is correct. They won't obviously publicly say what the numbers are, but it seems very obvious that they lost a million viewers. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the thing. It's like you can't necessarily like MySpace was a thing until it wasn't. And, you know, you have certain like with X, there's a certain amount of stickiness, despite the fact that the algorithm has been so juiced to be conservative and elevate Elon Musk. But a lot of these sites don't necessarily have that kind of stickiness. I just am not convinced that these are I don't know. We'll see what happens. I mean, this anything could happen here. I do think I was a little bit wrong about Twitter. Like I thought he would just kill it. And instead, he sort of it's, you know, because people are still on there, because politicians are still on there. It has a certain amount of weight. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. more Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora and as the number one podcaster iHeart twice as large as the next two combined so whatever your customers listen to they hear your message plus only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio Think podcasting can help your business Think iHeart Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was No voicing of any skepticism or doubt It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The third episode is out now from our series Project 2029, a reimagining where we examine what went wrong with Democrats approach to policy and how we can correct it and deliver changes for the American people. The first episodes dove into campaign finance reform, antitrust, and regulation. Our newest episode is on how we solidify reproductive rights for women. We talk to the smartest names in the field, like Abortion Every Day's Jessica Valenti, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, UCLA's own Mary Ziegler, and the Guttmacher Institute's Kelly Badden. Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power. Democrats need to be too. So please head over to YouTube and search Molly John Fast, Project 2029, or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and you'll find it there. Help us spread the word. Anne Applebaum is a writer at The Atlantic and the author of Autocracy, Inc., the dictators who want to run the world. Welcome, welcome, Anne Applebaum. Greetings. I want you to talk about where Europe is in this moment, because I don't think Americans quite understand what is happening across the Atlantic. It's a great question because a lot is happening across the Atlantic and no Americans don't understand it. So the premise of your question is correct. Look, I think that what happened in the last six weeks to not all Europeans, but certainly northern Europeans, was pretty extreme. So remember what happened in January. The Danish government came to believe, both because of things Trump said in public and because of other information that they had, that an actual invasion of Greenland might be imminent. This is their territory. Those are Danish citizens. They voted in Danish elections. So they mentally prepared for this. They thought about whether they would shoot down American planes. They thought about whether they would shoot American soldiers. Would American soldiers shoot Batik at them? What would this do to NATO? What would it do to the economy? Same conversation went on in most other European countries. I know the Germans were particularly freaked out. They were also aware that America might be about to be at war with one of their close allies. You know, Denmark, you know, very integrated into the German economy, too. And they went through this mental exercise. OK, that's it. We might really be going to war with America. And then, of course, it came to an end. Trump gave a speech at Davos in which he sort of threw out the idea and he mixed up Greenland and Iceland three times and he rambled on about a lot of other things. But I don't think people have recovered. So I've just been to Copenhagen. I was there last week. And I met one person after another who asked me exactly the question you just said. Do Americans know what happened? Do they know how angry they are? Do they care that we're angry? And I had to tell them, no, I don't think Americans know. I'm not sure they care. And I'm not sure they realize the significance of it. I was in both Munich. I was at the Munich Security Conference and then I was in Denmark. And in both places, I heard people talking about how to hedge against America, how to disconnect from America, you know, how we need to deal with American technology and American defense technology and how we need to build something different. And none of this is going to happen overnight and won't happen quickly. But a very clear shift has happened. I mean, over the past, I'd say, two or three months from people saying, well, you know, Trump, we can deal with him, you know, whatever. He has he has quirks and it's all a little strange, but we can find a modus operandi to people saying, OK, this is really serious. This is a different kind of country to the one that we thought was our ally. We can't cope with it anymore. There's like a truth question here when it comes to Trump, which I think is incredibly disturbing, which is like it does strike me. Remember, Iran, obviously not people you can take to the bank, but they did say that Trump had maybe lied about what the war sort of what's happening with his wanting to go to war. And I wonder if you could talk about that. That seems like a very I mean, we have certainly had presidents lie about war before, but we've never had it has never seemed so possible that Iran might have a point. We have. So, first of all, remember that we have also struck Iran before. Trump did it last year. And at the time, the administration claimed they had destroyed Iran's nuclear program. So if that was the case, then why are we now negotiating with Iran about their nuclear program? Why did we just assemble this massive force in the Middle East supposedly to deal with Iran's nuclear program? So, I mean, the lies are on multiple levels. There was lies about the last engagement. There are lies about this engagement. This one seems likely to happen maybe again in the next few days. The administration has given no explanation for it. There is no clear goal. We don't know what it's for. Is it regime change? Is it nuclear? Is it some other goal? There's no discussion with the American people. Trump didn't mention it, didn't talk at length about a coming war with Iran and his State of the Union speech. The Congress hasn't been told. I saw a quote from some members of Congress today saying, no one's briefed us. We don't know what's happening and we don't know why. I mean, so there is a massive amount of American firepower in the Middle East right now, and we don't know why. And that's very, very peculiar, and I think completely unprecedented and very different, even from 2003 when we did go to a war in Iraq, but we discussed it in advance. We talked to allies. We had allies, actually, as people have now kind of forgotten. You know, there were a set of reasons why we were doing it. You know, you can dispute the reasons or don't dispute them, but they were presented in a way that was logical. And this is completely different. So we're both in Europe, where we almost went to war with Denmark, and now in the Middle East, we're in just a different world where American military power is being used without any explanation or justification that we're aware of. We still have the president of Venezuela and his wife in a Manhattan detention. Yep. And in a way, the weirder thing is that we have them in a Manhattan detention, but the Venezuelan regime is still in place. And so this very repressive, very ugly regime, which was by the end of Maduro's term had been rendered completely illegitimate. They had a they stole an election a few some months ago. You know, we haven't changed the regime. And Trump is saying how marvelous it is to work with Delcey Rodriguez. This is the woman who's now running it. And so once again, the purpose of even that is, again, strange. I mean, there was an informal justification for the kidnapping of Maduro, which is that he was being arrested because he was in violation of U.S. law. And I think Rubio has said that, you know, on a couple of occasions, but then Trump will occasionally talk about Venezuela and say, it's really great. We're taking all the oil. And so once again, the purpose of it, the justification for it, what is the utility to America or to Americans or to American foreign policy? That's unclear. I mean, clearly some U.S. companies will benefit. Some money from the Venezuelan oil is said to be going to an account in Qatar. I don't know what happens to that money. These are almost like Trump's private actions taken with U.S., the full force of the strongest military in the world and really the strongest and most impressive military machine in human history. And it's just what he feels like doing when he wakes up in the morning. And it doesn't necessarily have to be part of a strategy. It's just wild. I mean, it's also quite scary. I wonder if you could talk about because there's so little frost. I mean, clearly the American people don't trust it. And because Trump has tried has not necessarily tried to sell this. Do you still think it will happen? And also, do you think that like that Europe? I mean, I just am curious, like, you know, sort of your sense of who are the bad guys here? Like it seems like Marco Rubio went in and gave a sort of more polite speech at Davos, but it still had the same substance. So, I mean, those are two different questions about trust. But so the the the curious thing about the various speeches is that there were several things said in Munich. I wasn't at Davos, but I was in Munich and I heard different. That's right. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's OK. I heard different speeches made it by different people. Usually the message was, we want Europe to defend itself. You know, we're telling Europe now that we're not going to come to your aid anymore. You know, we're not going to be, you know, we're not supplying conventional weapons to you and to Ukraine. And, and you have to, and okay, you know, Europeans have heard that message. They got it. They've been spending massively on the military in the last several years, actually before Trump. I mean, it was really Russia that made them do it. But simultaneously, there is another message. And the other message is we want Europe to be run by the kinds of political parties that we like, far right parties who use the same kind of radical language that we use. These are not conservative parties. There's Europe. Europe conservatives already right now run Germany. They run Poland. You know, they but they don't like those kinds of conservatives. They want radicals. And the radical parties, they're all a little bit different, but with some exceptions, tend to be pro-Russian. They are against European defense spending, and they are opposed to European unity and the European unit itself. They want to break it up. you know and which if which if that were to happen European self-defense would become impossible so we're in a very weird moment where there's these these different messages going out and that means that it's not just a question of one or you know Trump not being trustworthy or nobody you know it's it's you know literally U.S. policy makes no sense it's a it's illogical you know and And again, you know, the Danes, as they got ready to defend Greenland, you know, and prepared their people to fight the United States, you know, only a few days later when Trump kind of dismissed the idea, they were being treated as, oh, well, why did you take all that so seriously? You know if you the prime minister of a country that might be fighting the United States and you forced to take it seriously and then you told not to take it seriously what do you conclude in the end You know you can trust you it not a question of whether it Rubio or Vance or Trump or anybody else I mean the whole thing is seems incoherent to people and they are looking for ways out I mean it is not easy to untangle European and American relations, just like it's not easy to untangle Canadian and American relations. These are relationships and ties and contacts built up over many decades. I think they are the fundamental basis of American prosperity. You know, the fact that we have these big markets, you know, we have allies who treat us like, you know, as if we were, you know, always to be trusted and always to be, you know, and reliability to be taken for granted. And all of that is now going to take a long time to pick apart and there will be ups and downs. But the process is beginning. I wonder if you could talk about the midterms because they're like looming. I think there's a lot of anxiety. I wonder if you could talk about what you're seeing and and sort of what you think is coming there. So I don't like I don't I can't predict the midterms. I mean, the thing I would I would watch very closely is the administration's multiple efforts to manipulate or shape the playing field or maybe even something more dramatic. You know, the effort to manipulate elections is not going to be one thing or probably it won't be one thing. It'll be a lot of little things. And some of them have already happened. You know, the pressure from the federal government on some states to redistrict out of out of lying the census, which has never happened before. We never bring long tradition in America. Both parties do it. You know, but this is never the you know, the president putting pressure on state legislatures to do it never happened. federal government. Redistrict. Yeah, that's a really good point. The Texas redistricting was completely unprecedented. Unprecedented. You know, redistrictings usually happen after a census and there hasn't been a census. So that's, you know, that's one. But there's also the Department of Justice has been demanding that states, some states hand over their voter rolls. So there are lists of voters with voter information on the bogus, I don't even know what the bogus ground something to do with immigrants, but immigrants, it is well known and has been repeatedly shown that illegal immigrants do not vote like they don't want to vote. You know, it would be dangerous for them to vote. There's no evidence that they vote at all. I mean, maybe once or twice. Who knows? Somebody did it by accident, but there's no there's no evidence for it. Nevertheless, they're using this as an excuse to demand voter rolls. There have been a couple incidents in the last few years. I did a podcast myself about this, of people voting and then being subsequently kicked off voter rolls. This happened in North Carolina. There may be other efforts to keep certain kinds of people from voting, you know, to keep categories of people from voting. Trump has already talked about eliminating voting machines, voting, early voting. You know, they're looking to do what they can to eliminate voting. And so this, I think, is going to be something that is fought at the state level in almost every state. And I think people who care about voting and think it's important need to pay attention to those arguments and have their voices be heard because there will be an effort to do this. And it's not even it's not it takes it's not like conspiratorial to say that they're doing it. First of all, they're already doing it. Second of all, Trump has tried it before. They've said it before. They tried it before. They tried it on, you know, in January of 2021. So we you know, we know they're going to do it. And then the only question is, can they succeed? And that I don't know. I mean, there are there are lawsuits going on. There are states who are resisting. There are there's some pushback in Congress against some legislation that the Trump administration had to pass. You know, we now have this same act. You know, we now have the we now have the Supreme Court for the first time having pushed back on Trump on a really important policy. This is tariffs. And so maybe, you know, maybe we'll get some, you know, some some judgments from courts, you know, on this, too. But it's a serious problem. It's not a joke. It will be the theme, I think, of the next six months. We're going to be talking about how will they try to steal or rig or shape or manipulate the elections because that's what people like. That's what autocratic populists do. Yeah, that's what they do when they take power. The way you end a democracy is by effectively ending people's right to vote according to whatever rules of the system they have. And our rules are strange, but they're still our rules. And, you know, you know, we have the right to we have the right to elect our leaders by them. Yeah. I mean, it is it's definitely when you look at the SAVE Act, I mean, basically it's unconstitutional, right, to federalize elections. Our whole thing is that we have state the states are responsible for elections. But that doesn't mean Trump won't try. no i mean the lesson of the last year is that just because something is legal doesn't mean he won't try it i mean he you know he he he does things all the time that are illegal i mean are he and he's asked people to do things that are illegal and when you know when they discover they're illegal they object and then they're fired i mean that's we have i have i have that was another thing that featured in one of some project that i did so there you know they know that and that's their modus operandi we we know it's legal we're going to do it and then let the courts find us later. Yeah. I wonder if you could talk about the propaganda, because that is the other thing. And now we're in a sort of new brave new world of propaganda where there are deep fakes. And I mean, I feel like 2016 was the first election where we really had this kind of, you know, sort of Earth one, Earth two phenomenon. And it's only gotten worse. And I'm sure the Europeans are a little more sophisticated about what they're seeing and they have a little more regulation around it. But I'm just curious if you could talk about that for a minute. So the way our the way our information space now works is that we mostly communicate and mostly, especially younger people, get information about politics from not from journalism of any kind, Like not right wing journalism, not left wing journalism, not Fox News, not CNN. They mostly get their information from TikTok, from YouTube videos, from, you know, maybe they use X, maybe they use Facebook. And that's how that's how people learn about what's going on in the world. And all of those platforms are one way or another controlled by algorithms that are not designed to promote information that's good or, I mean, forget about true, you know, but information that's, you know, calm and, you know, designed to make you think or make you join an argument. All of them are governed by algorithms that push extremism, that push anger, emotion. You know, the messages that win on any of these mediums are the ones that are emotive and strong and angry and often divisive. And they also, the other way that the way these algorithms work is that they allow people to effectively you choose your own world to live in. So it's not just Earth 1 and Earth 2. There's many Earths. You know, you live the world that you've created because of the things that you've clicked on. And then, you know, then the algorithm shows you more of that. I mean, I actually had a period last week when all I could see was ice skating because I watched some of the Olympic ice skating and all my algorithms decided I wanted to see more ice skating. So I had to try and find a way to make it stop. I admire and loved the ice skating. It was amazing. But I was going to say the third thing is that we also live in a world where we have the illusion of free speech. Like you write something on Twitter or you write something on Blue Sky and you have the illusion you're saying something and people are responding to you and you're having a conversation. I mean, actually, who sees the thing that you wrote, whether they're able to respond to it? All of that is manipulated by, you know, computers in Silicon Valley, basically. So we aren't having a free speech conversation. It's not governed by rules that we've all agreed on about who gets to talk and when and who is heard. Instead, we're having a conversation that's run by them. And I think, and they, for whatever reasons, in some cases, it's commercial and in some cases, it's political. These platforms have decided that, you know, propaganda works for them. You know, it travels fast. It gets people to click. It gets people, you know, it makes people stay online longer. You know, maybe some of them, I think Musk probably has a political goal. You know, he wants to convert more people into his version of radicalism. And, you know, all of that has made this a world that's ideal for, you know, for the spreading of propaganda, false stories, you know, false videos. Now that the federal government does it, the White House does it. The White House has published doctored photographs of people. The administration puts up kind of Nazi-like on some of its channels. Now that they're doing it, too, it's really normalized it. And it's now available almost everywhere. And, you know, I think it's people often ask me, how do you know what to read or how do you decide what's true? And all I can say is, you know, I just based on my experience, you know, over many decades, I know who's a responsible journalist who's actually gone to work and, you know, gone to interview people and tried to find things out and, you know, and told a real story and who doesn't. And and you have to, you know, you have to you now have to have a have a personal way of determining what's true and what's not true, because, you know, what you read isn't going to do it for you. Yeah. And thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Nice to see you again. Mike Tomaski is editor of The New Republic and author of The Middle Out, The Rise of Progressive Economics. Welcome. Welcome, Mike Tomaski. Hi, hi. Hi, I'm so glad to have you here because there's so much to talk about. Let's start with the weird moment we're in. So we have the Epstein story. It is really the rest of the world is taking this deadly seriously, which I think is such a stark contrast to where we are as a nation. We have a Norwegian PM who tried to kill himself. We have two members of the British, you know, one former prince, the other a former ambassador, both being swept up by the police. And then we have a Republican Party and a Trump cabinet filled with the Epstein class. So talk us through what's happening here. Yeah, well, some of we are taking this seriously in the United States, a lot of we. But the we who aren't taking it seriously, unfortunately, are the we who have the power to do something about it. And that we is, you know, the Justice Department and Republicans in Congress and, you know, other conservative commentators who the White House listens to who might be able to pressure Pam Bondi to do something right on this. You know, that's the we that's the problem. You know, the we that includes you and me and Ro Khanna and Tom Massey very much wants to get to the bottom of it. But but there's another we that's that's blocking it. And so I'm fascinated to see where this is going to go with this revelation, this story that NPR broke Thursday and these missing documents that have to do with this poor girl who was 13 at the time. And, you know, what she had to say. I don't want to speculate irresponsibly, but there could be a story there. Let's just put it that way. Yes. Usually when the DOJ withholds huge chunks of 302s of interviews, when the DOJ holds large chunks of evidence from what is supposed to be a massive file dump that is supposed to include everything, it certainly looks like they're trying to keep the public from reading certain things. I want to talk about Me Too and accountability. because I have been working on something and reading all of the sort of, you know, what happened in 2018. And one of the things that happens with a cultural moment like that, with a sort of sea change, is that society sort of makes a contract, that the contract sort of changes. And I wonder if you could talk about the influence that having someone with so many allegations of sexual misconduct mean for the American social contract. It has corrupted and corroded the American social contract and taken us backwards in a lot of ways. I mean, OK, with Me Too, things did seem to change, right? We seemed to agree. We, again, I say this we, although it's a very phantom concept this week. But, you know, more or less, society seems to agree that women had not been taken seriously for a long time or ever when they lodged these allegations, which it generally takes a tremendous amount of courage to go public with or even to tell, you know, tell a superior at work. And so society's view changed that, you know, we were going to take these things more seriously and default on the side of believing women and maybe not, you know, and then there was some going overboard. So there was a little correction that said, OK, you know, let's not believe everything that's said about every man because people do deserve the presumption of innocence here in the United States. But let's presume that these aren't just made up crazy things and that this is a problem that society needs to take seriously and deal with. You know, I think a lot of us in that we are still in that place. But when you have a phenomenon like the Epstein phenomenon and when the president of the United States has how many 30 credible allegations surrounding him and when a whole media apparatus is dedicated to the proposition of defending him no matter what the allegation is, then society is bound to take a pretty big step backwards, I think. One of the things I think about is Lutnik, because Lutnik is such a good example of someone who didn't have any government experience. There are all sorts of questions about what his past business acumen was. He then, elevated by Trump, lies about his relationship with Epstein. Now we see CBS reported that he did business with Epstein. There's certainly an LLC that he signed with Epstein. You know, there was a lot of lies and a lot of obfuscation. So Trump clearly made this thought that, you know, he sort of had an idea that if he the first time he fired all these people, and it was used to undermine him. So this time he would fire no one. Do you think that that has been a smart play? And talk us through sort of what you think in connection with Epstein. I hate to call it smart because it's really disgraceful and disgusting and immoral. And I can't call anything like that smart. But, you know, I can at the same time concede that it works in the short term. I mean, lying works for somebody like Trump in the short term. just deny, deny, deny, and turn the accusations around. Often, when you can, turn the accusations around on your accuser and say what you're guilty of about them. And that muddies things up and that confuses. And then the press following the rules of mainstream journalism has to write, well, it's complicated. And that confuses a lot of people. In Lutnik's case, by the way, nice to see somebody at CBS News doing some reporting still. That's good. That's a good story. I don't think Letnick was doing anything, you know, sick. It did take his daughters with him. But it was obviously some business thing, I guess. Well, who knows, right? We don't know. Yeah. But, you know, the fact is he did lie. He just he lied. And when you lie that blatantly, there's usually some reason you're lying. Yeah. The Venn diagram of people in the Trump cabinet and people in the Epstein files is not quite a circle, but there's quite a lot of overlap. Right now, we're in a situation where the rest of the world is taking this deadly seriously and the Trump administration is not. When you look back at Me Too, the original Me Too, there wasn't a ton of legal accountability with the exception of Harvey Weinstein. But there was a lot of like social accountability. Do you think that stuff gets stopped because of the admin or you think that could happen anyway? Because what we've seen is like corporations, which used to pretend to be moral, have really bought into Trumpism. My instinct on that is pretty grim. There's not going to be a lot of social accountability as long as Trump's in the White House. And really, if Vance or whoever follows him in the White House, because they're going to bottle it up in the legal system and they're going to prevent these things from coming out. And there's just not going to be any oxygen in the culture for us to really discuss these things in a serious way. The role of presidential administration, Molly, plays in these kinds of social and cultural questions, I think, is that, you know, two things. A tone is established by the way the president talks and the things the president seems to care about, not care about. That's number one. And number two, as I said, legally, a Justice Department can keep things under wraps and just not let them get out. I think on Epstein, you know, if there's a Democratic administration in 2029, I think we'll really get somewhere. I'm not sure how we get somewhere before that. It's possible. You know, there could be some brave people in the Justice Department who have stuff and are willing to be whistleblowers and are willing to leak things. We've seen a number of whistleblowers already in this first administration or in the first year of this administration. And there may well be more. That is certainly true. So I want to talk about what it looks like, you think, right now, because the Democrats have an opportunity to sort of claim the moral high ground. We've seen that with certain members of the party. I wonder what you think that might look like. You know, on Epstein things, I think they're doing pretty well. Kana, I think, has done a terrific job and others like Raskin have pitched in. You know, there's only so far they can get until all of those documents are released. And I also, you know, we assume they've read a lot more than you and I have had access to. So they know things, but they just can't say it yet. Right. Don't you think? Yes, they know certain things. But then there's also all this redaction that wasn't supposed to be there that they can't get. So I would say I think the co-conspirators, Les Wexner, I think there's more, certainly. Yes. You know, and Massey has that list of 250 names that the survivors gave him. The thing that's so insane about this case is you have more than a thousand victims. You have huge numbers of them who are in contact with legislators. And you have states like New York where the statute has been changed. Yeah. Still, you know, it takes a lot of courage to come forward. I mean, so this woman who was a girl at the time with these Trump allegations that are part of the story that NPR broke. You know, who is she? Where is she? Is she contemplating coming forward? I mean, there's a lot. You know, she risks a lot. You know, she's going to get death threats and all that sort of thing. I can see why she wouldn't want to do it. You know, when I talk to Danny Belsky, who's one of the most coherent, thoughtful, I want to say she's a person who is an extremely good speaker, besides having had her life just completely pillaged by Epstein. And this group of survivors, they all have a relationship with each other. Not all of them, but many of them are sort of a support group for each other, which is incredibly wonderful, but also incredibly awful that that needs to happen. And when you talk to them, you really do see they didn't have a relationship until these files, you know, until this law was passed. Right. Yeah, I think this law was a really important landmark in, you know, helping to give that community of people some courage and galvanize them, hopefully, into a sense of common action. But it's still a very hard thing to do, you know, to come forward against powerful people, especially the president of the United States, who's as vindictive as we know this one to be. I talked to a member of Congress who said one of the problems is you can't say you can defend people when you maybe can't defend them. When you're just trying to defend yourself, when people like Eric Swalwell and Mark Kelly are being pursued by this Justice Department for, you know, Mark Kelly is a great example of someone who made an ad that said you don't have to break the law. and the Trump administration went after him. I mean, it's hard to feel safe in that environment. Yeah. We don't need any more evidence that, you know, they'll go after political enemies with all the weight, prosecutorial weight they have. Now, these things all get thrown out. So James Comey, Letitia James, et cetera, and their prosecutors are keystone cops half the time. So, you know, it's really, in a sense, if you're one of those people, it's kind of nothing to worry about because it's very strong that it's going to get thrown out. But still, you know, your life's going to be turned upside down and you've got to go through your emails and your texts and, you know, and just and spend, you know, at least I would imagine 50 to 70 thousand dollars on a lawyer at the very least. It's funny because it's like, you know, when you think about a DOJ that really just exists to promote Trump and Trumpism and protect him. It's hard to imagine coming back from that. It is, but we live in a very weird universe, Molly. It was hard to imagine Donald Trump coming back from what he came back from. Yeah, it's a good point. So we're in the beginning of midterms. We're about to go into a primary season, which is going to be, I'm sure, as crazy as anything. What are you watching in the Democratic Party? We're seeing crazy donations to candidates, but the starving of the DNC. You know, I'm just curious what kind of trends you're seeing. I want to see Democratic candidates who, you know, fight and throw some elbows and not stick to this horrible consultants playbook of being cautious and just talking about prescription drugs or whatever it is. and, you know, not talking about, oh, don't take on Trump or don't talk about democracy or don't, you know, those kinds of things. I mean, one, the thing that I liked about Abigail Spanberger's response to the State of the Union Wednesday night was that she did those things, you know, I mean, she talked a lot about affordability, but then she talked a lot about ICE. She talked a lot about Trump's personal corruption, which I thought was great. So I hate this conversation, this internal conversation among Democrats that like, just stick to these safe kitchen table issues or or should you, you know, don't do democracy. No, talk about it all. It's all true and it's all related. Talk about it all and attack. So I want to see Democratic candidates who will fight and attack. And then I guess, you know, there are a couple of particularly interesting primaries that I know you're watching, too. The Texas primary election is what, next week, I think. So, yeah, that's an interesting one between Tallarico and Crockett for that Senate nod. And the Democrats have, I mean, just the sheer number of voters. Democrats are at like 102 percent of the 2020 number, whereas Republicans are at like 50 percent. Yeah. Enrollments favors Democrats. Enthusiasm certainly favors Democrats. So it should be a wipeout, you know, assuming the election happens. Yes. And we shall assume it happens. Mike Tomaski, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And now your moment of fuckery. Jesse Cannon. Somali, the IRS broke the law by disclosing confidential information to ICE 42,000 times. I am shocked to hear that Trump's ICE has broken the law. There was a really good piece today in The Atlantic about this book that's coming out about Kristi Noem. I don't know if you saw it. I did see it. Yeah. And Corey and what they're up to. And I think we're going to be in the golden age of some really good reporting on just how insane what's happening is. I think there's going to be a lot of reporting about this Homeland Security. And remember, like, we already know that Corey wanted to be Christie's chief of staff and Trump turned it down. And there's a lot of gossip that the reason that they fired the pilot was about a bag and maybe there was something in the bag. And I just think at this moment, these people are really like it's just a house of cards. But yeah, they're doing illegal shit. We know they're doing illegal shit. They tell us they're doing illegal shit every day. Yep. 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. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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