Charlie Sykes & Jacob Weisberg

Molly Jong-Fast (0:00)

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and the 10-year treasury is having its worst run in over 100 years. We have such a great show for you today. To the contrary, Charlie Sykes talks about Trump helping Democrats with their blue wave. Then we'll talk to Pushkin's own Jacob Weisberg about his new book, Profiles in Cowardice. But first, the news.

Charlie Sykes (0:28)

Molly, one of the things from our youth you would always hear about is like, we can't change the laws to allow a foreign-born person to be president because there was this movie, The Manchurian Candidate, that we were all assured would be the end of it. But one thing that really seemed obvious is we probably shouldn't have foreign countries controlling our news and media. But Brendan Carr of the FCC says, nah, fuck it, I love that guy MBS.

Molly Jong-Fast (0:52)

Okay, so I think it's important to point out that this is not actually about any country owning our media. It's about the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi owning what will be Paramount.

Paramount, which will include, if this merger goes through, CNN and CBS. So it's not like they're owning some rando, like some little movie studio that makes art films. They're going to own two of our biggest news outlets. Now, I want to add that Paramount is owned by Larry Ellison. And Larry Ellison has installed his son to run it, David Ellison. And David Ellison and Larry Ellison are both very tight with Trump world. So this is the Trump administration changing the laws so that a Trump donor can get what he wants. I mean, that's it. Like simple, simple stuff. They are changing the law so that Donald Trump's big donor, Larry Ellison, can create an enormous conglomerate that probably flies in the face of antitrust laws. So it's just like this is one of the things that is the kind of thing that America pre 2016 would be the biggest scandal going. Even pre 2024, this would be a pretty big scandal. Now it is just a Tuesday, except Friday, in Trump world. We should still be shocked by shocking things. We should still be appalled by appalling things. We should still be upset about things like this, even if they're happening because this administration is such a kleptocracy.

Charlie Sykes (2:43)

Yeah. So obviously we are seeing a big blue wave for them that looks like it's coming. We should not get too excited, obviously, because there's going to be a lot of fuckery. But one of the things that looks like it's going to help it is Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are going to try to force another Epstein vote. And Todd Blanch is being warned by a judge that he might be in contempt if he doesn't release some Epstein files soon.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:05)

Yeah. Now you'll remember that Speaker Mike Johnson, who has basically one move, has sent everyone home because Thomas Massie had an impeachment petition for Whiskey Pete. Charlie Sykes is the author of the newsletter To The Contrary, and the book, How the Right Lost Its Mind. So Congress will have to come back for this to happen. But this is a discharge petition of 218 signatures to force the release of the files related to Jeff F. And you'll remember that they are about 3 million files short, which is quite a lot of files, and they have broken the law in every which way, by not releasing them, not explaining the redactions, not, you know, the way the law was written, it was written in such a way to get them to have less loopholes. And this administration has basically ignored that. So Todd Blanch is basically the president's lawyer. Like he cosplays as our attorney general, but his true calling in life is being the president's lawyer. And he could face contempt proceedings. I think there's a lot of pressure for this administration not to be held in contempt of court. And that means that I think the US District Judge Sullivan probably will avoid doing that. In fact, he writes that it's premature for now. But the idea here is there is pressure on Blanch to release more information. And I think that he probably will release more information because it doesn't strike me as serving him to go down this rabbit hole with them. But either way, Epstein politically, the calculus on Epstein is that Epstein did in fact splinter the MAGA base. Like that was the first thing that started chipping away at the base. And so like you know that Epstein is an issue because people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson and Thomas Massey are still talking about Epstein. So I do think this is a major issue for Trump and it is an issue in the base. I think it's politically smart both for Thomas Massey, who wants to have a future after Trump, remember who's lost his seat, but I do think it's also smart for him.