Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.

And former Vice President Dick Cheney has passed away at the age of eighty four.

We have such a great chill for you today.

Treason Substack editor Miles Taylor stops by to talk about Trump's escalating.

War in Africa.

Then we'll talk to Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales about his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, a blueprint for building things that last.

But first the news.

It is died thirty PM and we have already had many of the major races called.

We're basically the only one we're waiting God is California's redistricting proposition.

And you're not gonna be awake with that gets called.

So we're recording right now.

Yeah.

For Jesse, I was like, I think we can be we can record now.

He was like, they haven't called the mayoral.

I'm like, we know what's going to happen.

Okay, So we're going to start with the the interesting small races.

PA voted to keep their Supreme Court, very very important thing.

So yes, Pennsylvania had three Supreme Court judges billionaires got very excited.

They were they're these uh, there are these races where you say it like do you want to keep the judges or do you want to kick them out?

And the billionaires wanted them kicked out for obvious reason.

This reasons is Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

But the people said no, they want to keep them.

They all got kept.

So that was a big win for a small race.

Big win for that.

Okay, another small race, big win.

No redistrict to get in Kansas.

Yes, in Kansas, they can't do it.

What's the matter with Kansas not that they cannot redistrict and that's good news.

Well, I think after Brownback running them into the ground for years, they've grown a little distrustful.

Having a really terrible Republican governor has really served the Democratic Party of Kansas, and they have a Democratic governor now too.

I mean, like with Trump, you know that you can push it too far.

Okay, So then we moved to our city, which is that Zora and Mamdani has defeated Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral race.

Yes, Zoran has has continued that you were chockingly the person who was pulling up twenty four points or some I mean every poll was like up ten of twenty.

I mean, I think the lowest I saw was fourteen points.

There were some very bad jug polls at Lasidtel, which has proved to all night now, have been very very off, which is a pattern they often have.

What the really interesting Mondamie numbers are, if you are under forty five, you support him, and if you're under thirty, you really support him.

So here's I think the sleeper story of this race.

And you saw it also with Abigail Spamberger the National Security let's just say what it is, the CIA mom.

Young people liked all those candidates, So you know, you've got a candidate like I know you're rolling your eyes at me, but you have a candidate like Mondami Mondami, who's like a very exciting candidate for young people because he's addressing a lot of things they want.

But you have candidates like Spamburger, who is a much more centrist candidate CIA in the sort of in a much more centrist vein.

She's also getting young people excited, which means probably two important things.

One is that young people are extremely mad and they should be extremely mad.

And two is that there is a real fury.

Look, there's fury.

People are mad.

And the other thing, which I think is another sort of underreported this story, is that people continue to be very mad at the Democratic establishment, but still much matter at Trump.

So like you may be mad at Chuck Schumer, there's certainly a place for that, but you're still ten twenty thirty points matter at Trump, and that's real and important to realize.

So I would say all of these things are important now.

As for me, an angry feminist who has seen all women candidates just shit on continuously, and who got to write that piece for The Times about Mikey Cheryl when I went to New Jersey, and who then found a bunch of men on the Internet talking about what an idiot I was and how it wasn't she wasn't electable, It was just the wrong They could just find the right woman, you know, the right woman to them is a man.

Mikey Cheryl's race that caused so much anxiety, that was tightening in all the polls was called decision desk called it at eight thirteen pm.

Okay, which, for those those who don't know this, Dow Jersey polls close at eight pm.

Yeah, decision made eight thirteen pm eest.

It did them thirteen minutes to know that Mikey Cher was going to win.

And so I give the heartiest fuck you to all of the people, including and now we're going to get real gossipy here, including the national political reporter who was with me at that Mikey speech saying, well, you know, she's just not that good a candidate, and you know Chittarelli is really catching fire.

I give her the heartiest fuck you because she is a woman and she should Anyway, the point is, misogyny is everywhere, and we have to be back misogyny and racism.

But I can speak very well on misogyny.

It's everywhere and we have to fight it.

Okay, well, let's move to what I could speak well on, which is being problematic.

So the Virginia AG's race.

J Jones, the Democrat has one.

Now for those who don't know this, because we've only mentioned this a little of the podcast, he said, some problematic text.

Now, when we say problematic texts, some might be wishing for the death of someone.

And so what I think is where the interesting emerging stories of night that is a lot of people are moving into the like these gotcha.

Things of the past are becoming less relevant with like Platner still staying successful and him winning.

This is a real test of how our politics are changing.

What are you seeing?

This guy had a bunch of text messages.

The text messages were released around the time the GOP Nazi chat, the first Nazi chat, not the GOP second, Yeah, was released around that time.

These text messages came out too, and they were this guy had text messaged someone and Sidiot wanted this person to die and wanted them and it was and they were disgusting.

They were disgusting text messages.

Now they weren't leaders of the party, right, or they weren't not leaders, but they weren't organizers of the party.

Musing about how they had a Hitler, you know that how Hitler had some good ideas, but they were bad and they were gross, and they were violent and disgusting, and they were also leaked at a very convenient time.

So good, he's going to win.

And he shouldn't have written those text messages.

And it's totally gross, but you know, the Republican would do something much worse.

So but that said, I you know, I think people shouldn't write text messages like that, and that's why I am the most.

All my kids are mad at me, because I'm like, anything you write in a text message, should you know, can haunt you for the rest of your life.

The real world is showing that people hate Donald Trump enough to go I don't care.

Yeah, So, Mikey, Cheryl, Abigail Spamberger, just a lot of overperforming every which way.

We'll see what happens with the deam redistricting in California, but my guess is that will go through and we're going to see Donald Trump.

And by the way, let me just point out, we're going to see Donald Trump do a lot of crazy anti democratic things now because this because now he sees the writing on the wall, and he is going to try to do every fucking thing he can to subvert our elections.

And we are going to just have to be so vigilant in the courts, in the peaceful pushback in the streets, because you know, all that Donald Trump wants is to get away with the kind of grift he's doing, and the American people don't want to let him get away with it, and so he is going to attack our institutions in ways I don't think any of us see coming Somali.

I think that the iceberg is next week ish.

Where with this government shut down, the pain that elected officials are going to feel from constituents is really really going to get ugly.

Because these next two stories are pretty gruesome.

Trump is saying that SNAP will only get paid after a shutdown, despite numerous lawsuits that say otherwise.

What do you feel in here?

I want to point out that when we were looking over these news stories.

Each one is worse than the one before.

Okay, there is not a single one where you're like, oh, at least the puppies are being saved.

I like to call this the Russian doll of Hell I make for you right exactly.

I want to point this out.

So two federal courts ruled last week that the White House must pay at least partial SNAP.

So this isn't two different courts, so he is going against what courts are ruling.

The money is there, it's for forty two million Americans.

Of those forty two million Americans, forty percent are children.

I wrote about this in my piece in The Times about Trump's Gatspeed party that he had at his.

Club this weekend.

Mara a Lago.

The initiation fee for mar A Lago, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a million dollars.

I just want you to understand what we're talking about here.

Forty two million people, a little less than half children.

Majority.

If they're not children, they're adults over the age of sixty.

So we're not feeding children and elderly people because Donald Trump doesn't want to.

Instead of being honest, because why would he, he truths on truth social snap benefits which increase by billions and millions of dollars manyfold explanation point right, we wouldn't want money feeding children.

That money should go to tax benefits for very wealthy people or crypto.

Maybe Argentina for no good reasons aside from Scottpiston spreads of investments.

Right.

Anyway, the point is a press conference today, which is Tuesday.

You'll be listening to this on Wednesday.

White House Press Secretary, or as I like to think of her, she's got a sort of North Korean edge to her.

Carolyn Lebott said, do.

You think she's just in the kay pop?

Yes, she's just in the capop.

That's what you met by that set.

The administration is fully complying with the court order, which they are not, by the way, but the recipients need to understand that it will take time to receive money.

The president does not want to have to tap into this fund in the future.

I mean, there are so many morally atrocious things about this story, but part of it is also like this was made possible by the unitary Executives theory, by the thinking that Donald Trump is a monarchical figure.

You know, there is no Congress, there is no Senate, there is no judiciary, there is only Trump.

Trump is a president.

Trump is a monarch.

Trump has decided that these people should can get their SNAP benefits because he feels like it.

In this case, however, they're not going to get his HAVE benefits because he does not feel like it.

And also, I think a reality check here is that despite the fact that Trump said SNAP spending went up during Biden's administration, it actually went up during Trump's first administration.

Shockingly, my man is doing the thing as he's accusing the Democrats of doing once again.

So in other shut down chaos, Sean Duffy are very competent reality TV star turned government official.

He says that we can see mass chaos next week if shutdown doesn't end and that airspace may be closed in parts of the country.

I need to stop and talk about Sean Deffy.

We need an aside for a minute.

This is a lesser known news story, the kind of stuff that we here at Fast Politics make sure to bring to our listeners because we have that kind of eagle eye.

Steel trap beverery for stupid Halso known.

As philosopher, poet, Kim Kardashian, legal scholar.

It's true.

Yes, I think of her as America's Supreme Court justice.

She is the RBG for the rest of us.

Just kidding.

She had said that she did not think the moon landing was real, one of her many hottest takes.

And Sean Duffy, who has such a commitment to the truth that he did in fact weigh in and say that we have landed on the Moon and that is made of cheese and is delicious.

Now, look, you know it's important.

In an administration filled with just the stupidest, most corrupt, most appalling people, it's nice to see Sean Duffy at least, I mean, you know, occasionally, like you'll remember he was caught talking about it.

I would never let his wife fly through New York.

Like my man is a wife guy.

There are a lot of people in that administration who are not wife guys.

We here at Fast Politics have a lot of respect for wife guys.

So again that's number one.

And then also, you know, he says it's going to shut it down if he thinks it's dangerous, which, by the way, I think there are a lot of people in that administration who would not shut stuff down if it got dangerous.

Right, I'm feeling bad as a wife guy that I my wife through Dower recently.

My husband is like Newark so cheap.

I'm like, okay, so you can get one of the worst burgers of all time at the CBGB cafe.

This is where your problems starts.

Now, now we have a story that you have to talk about because this.

Is your Yeah, this is my juristic.

Shed so up.

So one of the nightmare scenarios I think that we've all worried about since shows like veep in Secession is the idea of bomb threats at pulling places and things like this.

Now, this has happened in the past, but today in New Jersey, particularly in the counties I grew up in, we're seeing widespread bomb threats at democratic pulling locations, trying to depress the vote, because what we see in all analysises is that there's been many, many, many more Democrats voting in early voting in New Jersey for governor than Republicans.

And we have a guy who likes to portray himself as a bit of a mob attitude, Tony Soprano, guy running against Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl, who we've had many times on the podcast.

Yes, so we're seeing chaos and seue here because these people have no bounds to their dignity and respect for the norms of this country.

Yeah, I'm not arguing.

So we got law enforcement officers responding to polling places.

You know, these are threats, but law enforcement responded to threats that were received by email involving polling places in Bergen, Essex, Mercer, Middlesex, Mammoth Ocean, and Passaic and you know, luckily it's New Jersey and they have a lot of people out there and the police are investigating multiple phishing emails, fake claims of bomb threats.

It's just this is the new normal that we live in.

And that's because we have a man who is president who has encouraged his supporters to do stuff like this, who has said that he would like to see more violence.

You know who has who has in a million different ways supported political violence.

And it's you know, it's real dark.

It's not how.

Any of us want to live.

We just have to take care of each other.

But voting is continued on safely.

There hasn't been anything, and you know, every day that we have nothing terrible happen is a really good day.

Yeah.

So it related tos.

The federal election security cutbacks are for seeing local officials to go out of the loan.

Yeah.

Look, a lot of these little municipalities need money to secure their elections, to secure their Wi Fi, to secure their their reporting, to make sure you know, the reason why our elections are safe is because they're decentralized.

But the reason why they're expensive is because they're decentralized.

And Trump administration has cut off funding to that because, you know, just like cancer research, it seems like a waste of money.

Better to spend that money on tax cuts for very wealthy people, crypto scams and giant lavish ballrooms.

Correct, that sounds like the brand.

Miles Taylor is a former national security official and the author of the substack Treason.

Welcome back, too, Fastballut it's Miles Taylor.

Oh, it's so good to be here, my friend.

I always love talking to you.

I wish I could just have you in my ear all day long, you know, just fucking me up when things get shitty and calling me out of if I'm not moving fast enough on something.

No, no, you know, I am known to be very smushy.

It's not like I go on Fox News to announce military actions like our leader in chief.

I am again without words about Trump tells military, this is a I want to read you a headline from the BBC.

Like imagine how you're at the BBC and you see this huge country that is so fucked and you have to come up with headlines.

I mean, just like, okay, So here it is.

Trump tells military to prepare for quote unquote action against Islamist militants in Nigeria.

He tells them on Fox News, as one does.

I'll say one thing at the top end, which is, if there is any place that screams quagmire, it would be going into Nigeria and starting a war.

You know, and so many of the president's allies in the MAGA movement who allegedly voted for him to stop the Forever Wars.

I remember that that was season one.

They should be mortified by the prospect that we might get entangled in a spiraling conflict in Nigeria.

Now, what you can also say is it's reasonable and possible for the United States to go after terrorists if they are in Nigeria using over the horizon capabilities.

I mean, look, if there's an ISIS or al Qaeda cell in Nigeria plotting against the United States, sure we have the ability to go after them.

But talking about going to war in Nigeria, that's not a decision the president should make.

That's a decision Congress should make.

And also on Fox and Friend, Fox and Friends has now become and this happened in Trump one point zero two has become the sort of central propaganda organization.

You know, it's sort of where he gets his messaging out, where he talks to his people, where he talks to the army.

Yeah, and also talk about a sensitive national security decision and ruining the element of surprise.

You know, that would be like if George W.

Bush had gone on the view and said, you know, Tuesday at seven pm, the missiles will start landing in Bagdad.

I mean, you don't go do that.

And you know, in a sense, this is as bad or worse as Signal Gate.

But this time the president isn't even trying to protect these things on encrypted apps.

He's just going and telegraphing military action out there.

But again I would say, just like what we are seeing in Venezuela.

Yeah, this is one of those things where as a conservative, I say, this is why the founder said Congress makes the determination of whether we go to war, because when that doesn't happen, we get entangled in extraordinarily costly foreign conflicts.

And Donald Trump, the peacemaker president, on the path to get us into two new wars before year's end.

So can you explain to me this schizophrenia?

Because Donald Trump, like two weeks ago, he was trying to get a Nobel prize.

I feel like he didn't totally understand the timeline of the Nobel Peace Prize.

So he's like, it comes out in a week, so let's try now, right, And he had like a list, if he had this list of all these wars he had ended and just saying This list alienated both India and Pakistan because they were like, actually, no, they were a list of all these wars he had ended.

So explain to me how you have ending wars but also which are not aren't necessarily true but whatever?

Plus also starting mores, like how are these two things true?

They're not.

And this is the saying Donald Trump I wrote about seven years ago in the New York Times when I said he is unmoored to any first principles.

This man doesn't have first principles.

And so when he says he's the peacemaker president, that doesn't mean anything, because the next week he may decide it's more fun to use his power to make war instead of making peace.

Renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War.

And that wasn't just symbolic, it was representative of his mindset.

And I think Donald Trump is find out what a lot of other presidents before him have found out, is that the zenith of his powers are in foreign and defense policy.

Article two of the Constitution affords the president's greatest authority when it comes to the conduct of foreign affairs and his commander in chief role of the United States military.

But unlike all of those former presidents.

Donald Trump views those powers as an extension of his personal self interest, and that's why we are seeing corrupt conduct and foreign policy, him cutting deals with countries that are then weeks later cutting deals with his company and with his kids, with him taking actions that are favorable towards people who have praised him and unfavorable to those who are not, and in places where he wants to show that he is a strong man.

I mean, you know, the blowing up of the boats in the Caribbean against people who do not represent an imminent threat to the United States is not just a war crime.

It is almost the perfect encapsulation of a dictator trying to show I am a dictator and I can do whatever I want.

The law be damned.

The thing that makes me the most depressed is that in Trump one.

Point zero, there were all of these things he wanted to do, the people like you stopped him from doing, right like Mattis's and kela Is, and the people around him said like, no, no, you can't do that.

Let me just move this piece of paper or the Cohen You know.

Now, it is like anyone who may have seemed like they might be doing might have been capable of doing that has decided not to Marco jd Vans this one.

That one.

Obviously they were picked because they were malleable, but they must have some kind of calculus here right.

I think they're calculus is that the MAGA movement will control the party forever.

And the loyalty test right now in the Republican Party is how loyal are you to the leader?

And if they can say I was the most loyal to Donald Trump, their calculus is they will continue to have ascendency within the party.

Now.

I will also say, Molly like I'll be the first to concede that during the first Trump administration this idea of an access of adults around the president, which was a term that I helped coin.

There was a Daily Beast article that our friend Kim Doser wrote at the beginning of the administration.

I spoke to her and I talked about an access of adults in the Trump administration.

I understand why some people heard that and thought it was obnoxious, because you know, they were like, look, you're unelected bureaucrats, this isn't your job, and oh, you know, way to pat yourselves on the back.

You know why don't you come out here and join the resistance and fight this guy from the outside.

I get it, But I now finally think, after years, folks are starting to see why people who wanted to prevent the president from doing illegal things were needed in the White House.

A lot of mistakes were made by the axis of adults.

You know, it was a moral choose your own adventure, and I'm sure I chose many of the wrong paths along the way.

But at the end of the day, the so called deep state wasn't a group of people conspiring to stop the president from doing things he was allowed to do.

Its president's allowed to do stupid shit.

You know, once they're elected, as long as they're complying with the law, they can put bad policies in places, as long as it doesn't break the law.

The people who were pushing back against him, the ones you mentioned, the Mattises and the Kellys, were pushing back against things that were unlawful and unconstitutional.

And now, as you note, a group of people who don't want to do that, who just want to say yes to the things Trump wants, are very clearly enabling the scariest actions we've ever seen of someone sitting in the executive office of the President.

And it only gets worse from here.

I mean, if any of them have an acorn of a conscience and they do decide to exert it, they will be gone very very quickly, and they know that.

And then you're left, really truly with the diehard loyalists who are willing to Some of them are very willing to break the law for him because they're confident that he will come in and protect them and offer them pardons.

And that's where I would say to them if I had a chance to talk to Rubio and others, don't think that by committing war crimes and violating the laws of war and breaking the constitution, that you are going to be fully protected, because this guy, in the end, only cares about himself.

And I'm not sure he's going to pardon all y'all when he walks out the door.

He may have immunity at least to the extent that the Supreme Court has spelled it out, but you guys don't.

And people have followed illegal orders already in this administration.

In fact, it's almost impossible to keep up with how many illegal orders people have complied with.

And I think that's going to be one of the biggest challenges if the Democrats retake Congress is documenting that.

I think there are people in this administration now that are actually were suent romp, like the Stephen Millers, the russ VODs, like that crew.

Donald Trump he's not ideological the way as Stephen Miller is.

Like Stephen Miller, I mean, his orders have been, as it's been reported, like go in there and make it look scary, right.

I mean, that's sort of the ethos of ice.

I mean that crew that you didn't have that in Trump one point zero the same way.

I'm looking down because I was looking up something.

In response to that, Molly, I remembered a number of years ago, our friend Denver Riggleman, former Republican congressman who defected from the party, said something to me that I wrote in my book Blowback, and this is what he said.

GOP Congressman Denver Wriggleman pointed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Quote.

Stalin was awful, but you had little Stalin's that were much much more abusive and terroristic than he was because they thought they were allowed to be that way.

He said, the return of Trump will bring aids into government who lack character, experience or both and are ready for retribution.

Now that several years ago, but I mean that has come to fruition.

And certainly we learned that with the Soviet Union that the little Stalins were worse because the only way to climb the ladder was to demonstrate that you would be more unseemly than the next guy, that there was no limitation to what you would do for the ruler.

In fact, this is so unremarkable because we've seen it throughout history that you can go back one hundred years to Friedrich Hayek who wrote about how this phenomenon of the worst people rising to the top in ostocracies had become so consistent.

And the reasons for that are again quite simple, because when you have a dictator that's all powerful and that has an inclination toward illegality, you have to demonstrate that you will be the most dedicated to that commission of crimes than the next guy, even more than the next guy or gallon.

So you end up with these pretty horrible fucking people.

You know, run in the show and we're seeing that, you know, does it look full North Korea right now.

No.

But do I think there are people around Donald Trump who would murder for him?

Oh?

I absolutely do, And and in fact, I would say it's already happening.

There are people who are engaged in state sponsored murder right now under this administration, which sounds like a really a radical thing to said, he has killed.

At least three people, right, I mean, we know that there have been deaths in custody.

There have been deaths like there have been.

Maybe they weren't direct, like, maybe it wasn't like bang bang, you're dead.

But people have died in custoday, which would technically be a murder, right.

And there are people who are legitimately concerned that this administration took very seriously the hypothetical that was presented last June in front of the Supreme Court in the debate about presidential immunity, where uh, you know, the lawyers arguing against the expansive view of presidential immunity said well, what would be what would stop the president from then directing Seal Team six to go assassinate one of his political rivals?

And if you go back and you look at the response from Trump's lawyers, it's a very middling sort of response.

That's almost a tacit admission of well, if it was consistent with the president's duties, yeah, he could send Sealed Team six to go murder the political opposition.

Again, Remember it's the same Donald Trump that you know well who said I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

He doesn't mean that hypothetically.

He means that literally.

He means he could commit very obvious crimes and get away with it.

Not just with his supporters.

He now believes he can escape justice by doing that.

That's the scary as it gets in a constitutional system.

I think January sixth, there was a moment right after January where it was like it was really during January sixth, where it was almost like Trump was trying to figure out whether he could stay or not, whether he could and you had all these very rich donors of his being like, look, man, go home, right, remember that, Like it was like the closest we've ever had to people standing up to him.

It was like they were I remember because I knew some of these people, and they said, you know, it's enough, like we love you, man, but you can't.

You got to go home.

And it was the closest Republicans have ever come to standing up to him.

Again, I'm not making a value judgment.

I'm just narrating something that happened.

It strikes me that we are going to have another situation that's like that.

Now.

Maybe it's not you have to go home.

Maybe it's you can't kill these people, or maybe it's you can't jail the entire city of Chicago.

I don't know what it's going to be because I'm not a psychic, but clearly there's going to be a moment where my man does something that is so beyond the pale that his rich friends are like, you can do autocracy, but not like that man, or like and we've seen some of that, right, Like we saw there are some of these tech bros who've sort of started being like a little bit like, well, or really, Joe Rogan is a good Joe Rogan has been like, we didn't sign up for that, or you know, some of the podcast bros have been like, oh, or do you think that never happens?

And I'm just like getting high on my own supply.

I'm not sure if it happens.

I think that we're in a far worse place than after if January let me put it a different way, if January sixth happened today, Donald Trump has the support within the Republican Party to remain in office.

Yeah, I believe that firmly.

If you had this current Congress in power in that time period and knowing everything that they now know about Donald Trump, they would have stood by him in his effort to remain in office, and he would have remained past the swearing in of the next president, and we would be a in a I think, a full law and violent conflagration as a country because people would have gone to the Capitol on the other side of this political spectrum said eject the man from power, and it would have gotten very, very ugly.

And you know, at the time period, you know, surveys found that ten percent of Americans believed, you know, force would be justified to eject one occupant or the other from the White House, Like there was enough Americans ready to take up arms that if that had happened, we would have.

Been in it.

And so now the fact that we have so many people willing to I think defend Donald Trump's prerogatives no matter where they go, increases the odds of him creating that type of situation, and I do believe that situation's most likely to be him attempting to remain in power.

There's a lot of bad things that will happen, unfortunately that the American people will look the other way for.

But the most captivating thing in the public conscience about whether we live in a free country or not is when election time comes and does it feel like it was free and fair or not.

And we'll see that in twenty six, and we'll see it in twenty eight.

And if past his prologue, we should be smart and recognize the man will not leave public office.

That can take a number of forms.

He may run as the vice president under JD.

Vance and they do this wink nod putin Medvedev thing, which is exactly what happened, basically what happened in Russia.

He may try to get named Speaker of the House by the Republicans if they retake the majority in the House.

But he does not ever want to be out of an official position because he's pretty convinced if he's not in an official position, he'll be in a jail cell.

And that's probably right reason for that.

Yeah, Yeah, there's a reason for that, and so the guy will stop at nothing.

In fact, I have a much harder time with someone presenting me a credible scenario where the guy rides into the sunset.

I haven't seen it.

I haven't heard it from anyone.

And the denials coming out of the White House now about a third term are about the most tepid denials you could ever imagine, and they don't mean anything.

Donald Trump denying something doesn't mean anything, mark my words.

The man will try for a third term.

I think he's got a very good chance of remaining in office because they will politicize it.

Instead of Republicans turning against him, I don't think they'll tell him to exit stage right, and that puts us in a really, really, very alarming position.

Now here's one exception, and the founders wrote about this in the Federalist papers.

The best check on him, the most reliable check on him, is that ambition counter's ambition, as I think Madison said in Federalist fifty, which is he's surrounded by other guys who want to be president, and do they end up breaking from him because they want to take the party a new direction.

And that's the biggest threat, because then it hives off part of the tribe away from him, and it creates the inner tribe rivalry.

If no one does that, if none of them have the courage to do it, the tribe will stay firmly behind Donald Trump.

Oh that's never I'm going to sleep again.

I didn't need to sleep.

Fine, I'll just stay up for the next couple of years.

I don't sleep much lately because it's why I look like a sloptart all day when I'm giving stuff all.

Miles just known for your lack of attractiveness.

Thank you, Miles, You're the best.

Really, will you come back anytime?

My friend.

Great to be with you as always.

Thanks for everything you do.

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia and the author of The Seven Rules of Trust, a blueprint for building things that last.

Welcome to Fast Politics, Jimmy Wells.

Great, thanks for having me.

It's good to be here.

I had wanted to have you on to talk about this book.

You octipize such a super interesting place in the world.

So talk us through this book.

Why now?

Yeah, I know it's it's to me.

It's a little bit interesting that it's such an interesting space because certainly when I started, I thought, oh, let's write an encyclopedia.

And of course, you know, when I was a kid, if somebody said, oh, yeah, that you know, the the guy who runs Britannic is going to be and to talk, we would all fall asleep.

You know, it'd be darable.

But all of a sudden, sort of the simple idea of fact based information is suddenly hugely in the mix.

Yeah.

So I've written this book, The Seven Rules of Trust, mainly because you know, we've seen this enormous decline in trust, trust in journalism, trust in politicians, trust in business, to some extent, trust in each other.

And we've seen that in the last you know, twenty five years.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia has gone from initially being thought of as kind of a joke to one of the few things people trust, which isn't to say it's perfect.

Of course, it is far from perfect, but people do think, you know, it's at least basically.

We try to be neutral, we try to do the right things, et cetera, et cetera.

And so there's a lot of lessons learned.

How did Wikipedia get so popular, how did we what are the things that we all need to do to get back to a culture of trust where we can trust each other and trust politicians and trust journalism and so on and so forth.

Before we talk about the role, how do we get here?

Gezink, Well, I think it's a few different things.

The big thing we sort of have to mention, but it's it's far from the only thing is you know, we do have a president who seems to work very very actively to undermine any concept of trust, you know, in a way that's you know, even his supporters say, can't take anything he says literally, but you have to take him seriously and you can't take anything says literally because he contradicts himself all the time, and you know, you have no idea really what does that even mean?

And it's a very odd environment that we're in, you know, when we look at some of these metrics that these are these are long sending things.

So I think a piece of it has to do with business model for journalism, vocal journalism.

It's still pretty well destroyed, and that that means a lot around you know, where people getting information, what is the quality of information they're getting?

Certainly to the extent and I'm actually happy to see the rise in subscription models, because I do think that's actually very important because if all you're getting, you know, if the only revenue you get is from ad revenue, and there's nothing particularly wrong with ad revenue in and of itself, but tempted to sort of go for clickbait, go for noise, go for outrage, and then if you know, if we have a culture that's pretty toxic social media where you know, the algorithms again they're chasing clicks, they're chasing engagement time on site, and it turns out it's quite a good way to get engagement is to piss people off and to get a rise out of people and make a lot of noise.

And so none of those trends sort of point in the direction of, oh, let's slow down and have a thoughtful conversation, let's actually chew on ideas, and you and I might disagree, but these that we can both live with, et cetera, and we can trust each other to say, well, all right, yeah, I don't agree with you, but I really have nothing to say to sort of you know, violence, which is sadly something that I'm very worried about.

Talk to us about trust.

I want you to talk to us about a really important element and it speaks to the local news angle, right.

Yeah, yeah, so you know, make it personal.

The concept of trust is the concept of an individual person deciding to trust something someone, whatever it might be, and it isn't based on numbers.

You've really got to think about, you know, the other person, what you're saying, whether they're going to find what you're doing to be trustworthy, and so on and so forth.

You know, I do think we all understand this in a personal level.

I mean, I think the good news is, in my opinion, society isn't sort of at a personal level, most people, with their friends and even their maybe your relatives who you don't agree with on politics, people are basically still very nice people, and you know, they do trust each other.

And there are people I wouldn't necessarily like how they're going to vote, and I wouldn't trust them in certain regards, but you know what, I trust them to do all kinds of things, to not cheat me at the grocery store, that sort of thing.

So we need to start building from there.

That's kind of the make it personal.

It's like, let's remember those individual people are probably basically decent people, and yeah, it's advice as much.

I think it's quite applicable in business, you know.

And I'll just give an example, like, if you're driving your online business by doing a bunch of ab testing and you're not sort of stepping back and thinking in a very human personal way about what you're doing, you may find Gee, when we run this type of story, we get more clicks, or when we promote this kind of content, people stay longer.

But if in the process you're really undermining people's trust in the platform and the value of what you're doing in the long run, you're not doing the right thing, Like you're not being personal.

You're just like looking at some numbers and going, oh, here's how you get more clicks, here's how you get engagement on a website, even though people are kind of getting a little bit sick of the stuff.

And you know, I don't know how many people.

I think most people have this experience of like me, personally, I have.

Actually it's been a few years now.

I deleted the password for Twitter off my phone, and I sort of steadfastly refused to have any way of getting on Twitter on my phone simply because you don't need to.

Tell me why you don't want to be if there ever were a person who relates to that statement.

It is made.

Because it's engaging, it's addictive.

But it's like every time you get into some quarrel with some idiot on Twitter and you sort of realize, actually, that was an utter waste of my time, Like that was not a useful thing.

I don't I'm not a better person for it.

This isn't like, oh, someone challenged my ideas and I had a thoughtful engagement and made me rethink as No, it's just like crazy stuff.

And so even if the engagement numbers look pretty good, I think in the long run, people go, you know what, I'm just gonna delete this, like I'm too addicted to it and it's not making me happy.

End of story.

Yeah, one of the very few good things about Twitter.

And it's funny because it's like it's one of the very few good things and it seems to have just infuriated Elon is community notes and community notes is a very similar I feel like mechanism to Wikipedia in a way, And I'd love you to sort of explain what community notes are.

Explain what Wikipedia, you know, Explain this really good thing that's come out of it.

I'm with you.

I really like community notes, so I think it's a great thing, and I think, as far as I can tell, they seem to be running it in an honest way.

It's shocking.

I sort of touch that shocking, but I sort of trust it.

But what it is, you know, like generally, if it pops up, if I have any time whatsoever, I try to do it.

I try to look at this read and sometimes this stuff is absolutely irrelevant to me and I'm just some random human being.

But basically it pops up.

You know, people propose a note, and the note can often be like a fact check, a correction of facts is often so one of the ones I really love.

It's quite common in and and no note needed.

But generally, you know, it's like a way that sort of multiple people can vote and say, like this is not correct.

So it's similar in that sense to Wikipedia sort of trying to say, like, hold on a second, is this right?

Is this wrong?

And it's really useful, you know, for factual claims that are highly misleading or false, which are very very very common on Twitter.

I mean the problem with not doing that was always you know, the highly inflammatory factual claim that's false, gets spread very very quickly, and people don't have a means of telling is that right or not?

And you know, I actually I remember once I sort of retreated or something and sort of complained because basically, what it happens an account, a random account.

This is when they first started selling the Blue tick, and the account said it was a journalist from Al Jazeera, and it made some completely absurd claim and I believed it for five minutes, but I quickly scrambled around and started looking, hold on a second, this isn't even remotely true.

And I said, you know, look, elon, this is somebody pretending to be a real journalist and they aren't.

And he sort of responded with like a laughing emoji, you know, scare quotes real journalist, ha ha ha Right, and I'm like, you're totally missing my point.

Right, you can make fun of real journalists right as being biased or whatever, But the truth is you're letting some scammer pretend to be a journalist and spread complete nonsense.

That's the sort of thing that should have been, like community noted, it probably would have been, probably was.

And it's a little slow, you know, as things still viral claims go viral and so on and so forth.

But yeah, it's it's one of the few things that I like about the current state of X as they call it.

And it is in a way how Wikipedia works too.

Yeah, yeah, there is something to it.

Yeah, I mean the.

Difference is that Wikipedia has citations and Community Notes still has citations too.

Right, yeah, I mean I think you know, one of the things that sometimes happens, and lately I've seen it more than once.

So here's the way the deletion process works.

So you see a page and you think, uh, this page is bogus in whatever way, and you nominated for deletion.

Well, literally, any human being on the planet can nominate something for deletion.

There's no voting, there's nothing, but it's just a nomination and then a notice is place and then a discussion takes place, and often those those discussions are closed very quickly because the nomination was ridiculous.

So, for example, if somebody nominated for deletion nine to eleven, right, whatever it might be, but just to say this page should be deleted, it's just gonna be reverted very quickly.

People, that's ridiculous.

That's not even an argument other cases, it's like, no, we actually have to discuss, you know, like here's something in the news, or here's something you know, do we need an article about this?

Do we not an example that Actually I don't want to talk about elon the whole time.

But yeah, he was upset at some point because there was a there's a page about the Twitter files when he took over Twitter, and they released a bunch of Twitter internal documents.

I remember it was nominated for deletion and it already had been massive in the news.

It was clearly going to stay.

It's clearly a news.

Did he want it deleted?

No?

No, No.

He was mad that it was being that and it was kind of like here's the way people express it.

They are trying to delete it, like Wikipedia is trying to delete this.

It's like, no, Wikipedia is not some rando proposed it for deletion.

If you go and look at the discussion, it's like ninety eight percent of the people are saying keep it's important and they will be closed within an hour.

Like that's it.

That's the whole process.

And so when people don't understand how it works, right, they think, oh, look, Wikipedia is planning to delete this no, Wikipedia is not planning to delete it.

Some one person said it.

I've almost wondered if maybe we should on high traffic pages institute of system where maybe at least two people have to nominate before we post on the page.

But you know, currently that's the way it works, and you know, it's all part of the process, and often people do get that.

Like people know like Wikipedia is open, and it's a community, and it's a dialogue and a discourse, and so you know, often if a page is vandalized to say something ridiculous, people kind of they take it and they go, all right, well they're going to that'll get reverted very quickly.

But other times they don't realize that, and you know, you'll get all kinds of claims that just really don't make sense.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the Internet and thinking about how to be able to restore trust on the Internet, and I wonder if Wikipedia and community notes are a framework for that, like if you had to have things cited, or you had to have a sort of group putting together something.

So I was at a party recently and a very senior member of the Senate complained that there's no fact checking on the Internet.

It's probably responsible for that.

But because they could have regulated fact checking in but that is neither here nor there.

My own anxiety and hostility about that.

But I just wonder if you were a person who was really focused, I'm trying to bring truth to the Internet, or trying to bring some kind of shared reality, not even truth, because I feel like that's so triggering share reality the internet, would that be the way to do it?

I mean, I think it's a piece of it, for sure.

I mean when I think about, you know, how do we potentially improve social media, it's a really hard problem.

And I sort of to to give credit to the social media companies who have plenty of criticisms of it's a really hard problem because you know, one of the things that makes it easier for us is we don't have any kind of a box that's like what's on your mind?

Right?

Like you know, and the truth is, if you've got a box that says what are you thinking, some people think absolutely fact free horrible things and that's just the way.

That's just a fact.

But the algorithms are well within their control, and you know, you could, for example, particularly nowadays with AI, you can imagine an algorithmic tweak where you say, you know, if a post cites a quality source, and you can be quite open ended about what you mean by quality source, and a quick check by an AI is that it's accurately saying what's in the source, or right, it's arguing against the source or whatever.

You know, that's fine, you don't allow arguing, you know, like this article is completely wrong.

I disagree, that's fine, you know, et ceterat cetera.

But then you would boost those kinds of posts as opposed to just random rants and things like that.

I think it's not easy, but it could be valuable.

So I have it's just a pilot project and I hardly ever talk about it because we're still working on the software, but I will because it's relevant here.

But trustcafe dot io is like a pilot project.

I've just got two developers working on it.

We've got a small community, and the idea there is to say, let's work out a way to promote posts based on the most trusted members of the community, and there's a whole trust system people can trust each other and so forth.

The idea is, you know, it's like the challenges with an algorithm like you.

In order to be popular, the site has to be engaging, it has to be interesting, right, So it's like, oh, we only promote things that have detailed sort of treatise is with fifty seven footnotes.

Well, that's never going to work because people really want to post, Wow, this restaurant was great their last night.

Fine, you know, but to sort of be able to say, actually, we're gonna we're gonna find ways to identify as humans the people who are trusted in the community and will promote that stuff and will downraatee stuff that's from random accounts or from people who've you know, have been heavily sort of voted down on a trust factor before.

Now the hard part is, you know, if people conflate trust with I agree with you, right, because that's not the same thing, and it shouldn't be the same thing.

If somebody is opposite you on the political spectrum but they're engaging in a thoughtful way.

I think most of us, like mature people, can go, yeah, that's actually brilliant, Like that's who I want to debate with because I'll probably learn something and actually, you know, that's a useful activity in life as opposed to you know, arguing patrols, which is, you know, an absolute waste of typing.

So no, when I think that's I think that's the goal.

Jimmy, I'm so glad that I got to talk to you because to know there's someone else out there thinking about this stuff and trying to fix it.

You know, sometimes everything feels so especially right now in America, like we're just heading into a ditch.

So to hear this like it is actually quite heartening for me.

Yeah.

Well, I mean I think the book.

I try to be hopeful because you know, I just think about the Wikipedia community such a bunch of really nice people, and they just want to do stuff that's useful in help and they enjoy intellectual pursuits with each other and so on and so forth, and they're not very political broadly, and you know, I think that's really great.

And then you know it's just like wow, like we need more of this, We need a lot more of this, because it's a scary time, you know, I mean it's a scary time.

I think this whole Charlie Kirk thing just weighs on me very heavily, because clearly, Charlie Kirk is a person who I would have a great many disagreements with ideological, political and so on.

And I didn't pay much attention to him before hand.

I just knew he's some Trump supporter guy.

And since i've you know, I've seen clips of him and I've watched this and some of the things he said were just outrageous and offensive.

But what's interesting is he did get out there and try to engage with people he disagreed with.

And when he was assassinated, he was sitting on a pay sitting on a stage with some people and answering questions from students, and some of the questions the last question he answered was quite a hostile question and he was just about to give I kind of know where he was going with the answer, you know, whether it's accurate or true or not.

And it's like, wow, like this is bad, right, this is really bad because it's going to happen on both sides.

Violence is horrible.

It's bad.

And in the book I, you know, I talk about a friend who was assassinated.

Here Joe Cox, a member of parliament, and here it is both sides.

There was a Conservative member of parliament who was assassinated as well.

And it's like, Wow, like this is really bad.

There's so many knock on effects, right, So it's bad.

It's just bad in and of itself.

But also you think about things like, are good people going to be afraid to go into politics?

Are good people going to be afraid to all speak out?

It's all bad and the inflammatory rhetoric that you see just recently we saw I haven't watched the video, so I don't with Trump.

If you read a quote, you never know if he was joking or telling the truth or what do you think?

You know?

But you know when he's saying the army needs to go into the cities and it's the enemy within and it's a war.

If you take that seriously, that is unbelievably terrifying.

That is an absolutely absurd and ridiculous thing to say.

Even if you think, gosh, we've got a really serious problem with crime, even if you think, gosh, you've got a really serious problem with immigration.

Whatever you're correct or incorrect, whatever your political views are on some of those things.

The idea that it's time for the army to come in take over.

Wow, Like that's unheard of and terrifying.

Jimmy wows, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

It's been fantastic.

No Jesse Cannon.

So, Mollie, I like this report over at Axios.

It says the headline really just says exactly where we're at in America today.

Trump readying a quote unquote living hell for GOP senators over nuking filibuster.

So Donald Trump really really really wants to nuke's a filmbuster, and he is decided that this is the way.

Now, this is what keeps happening with Donald Trump.

Donald Trump decides he wants something, Republicans say no, then they say yes, they.

Do it, and here's what happens.

Nothing good, Right, It's like more data points that Donald Trump can do whatever he wants.

So in my mind, if I were a Republican, I would stand up to him.

This is just like he's just going to keep running over you until you stand up to him.

So he wants you to nuke the filibuster because he doesn't care about the role of law, he doesn't care about norms and institutions.

He doesn't have a fog.

You know, maybe they do nukes a fellabuster.

Maybe I don't think anyone wants to nukes a fellabuster, and I think that everyone knows that if they do nukes a fellibuster, it's going to ultimately lead to a lot of bad shit and more having to say no to a man who does not like people to say no.

So again, I don't know where this goes.

If he spends all his time torturing Republican senators, that will be quite fun, and I, for one would love it.

That's it for.

This episode of Fast Politics.

Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.

If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.

Thanks for listening.