Dan Pfeiffer & Eli Tan

**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 Gallup has the Supreme Court Straub approval rating at a record low, with just 33% of Americans approving of the high court's work. We have such a great show for you today.
Pod Save America's Dan Pfeiffer stops by to talk about Trump's dysfunction. Then we'll talk to the New York Times' Eli Tan about the shocking story of Meta's Louisiana Data Center. But first, the news.

**Jesse Cannon** (0:38)
So Molly, Governor Beshear has done an interesting maneuver here that I don't know how effective it will be to try to get Mitch McConnell to show proof of life before this upcoming deadline next week, where there would no longer be a special election for his seat.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:56)
So here is what's happening. There is a lot of noise about whether or not Mitch McConnell is dead. Probably not, but maybe.
Nobody knows.

**Jesse Cannon** (1:09)
Doesn't it feel like it would be a fitting part of his legacy to do this? That's just basically why this, it almost feels like we're honoring him by assuming he would do this.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:18)
I don't think that Mitch McConnell is dead. I'm going to tell you the truth. I actually don't think he's dead, but maybe he is. I don't know. I mean, I think the more likely scenario is that he's not as well as those photos make him out to be. So there have been two very bizarre photos that were released by Mitch McConnell's office. Both make Mitch McConnell look very relaxed in a way that if you look at more recent photos of Mitch McConnell, they don't totally track. Now, am I a Mitch McConnell truther?
I am maybe a little bit of a Mitch McConnell. Maybe I'm a Mitch McConnell truth or I don't know, but there's something off here. So here's what's happening. Andy Beshear, who's the Democratic governor of the state, is trying to figure out how to do this. So it's 40 days since the 84-year-old has been seen.
Forty days, that's a little more than a month. Beshear is trying every which way to do it. So he has sent a letter to McConnell and his staff that McConnell needs to verbally address his constituents and demonstrate his ability to serve or resign his seat. This is, I think, probably, again, the best possible option. Remember, Beshear is in a red state with a supermajority that has actually, and again, we don't know what the story is with the appointment, but they did something to make it harder or maybe impossible for the Democratic governor to fill the seat because they're Republicans and so they cheat. So we don't really know if he may have trouble filling that seat, but either way, this is the way that Beshear is trying to thread the needle. And again, it is pretty strange that McConnell has just completely disappeared. And so we'll see this letter was from Monday, and it's the second one that Beshear has sent to Mitch McConnell's office. Remember Scott Jennings? I'm not sure you want to take that guy to the bank, but he has said that he has talked to McConnell for 20 minutes. Other Republicans have also batted around that figure as well.

**Jesse Cannon** (3:41)
Yeah. So let's talk about some, not some fun things happening on the Democratic side. As we discussed in our last episode, Ken Martin has been accused of being a very ineffective leader at the DCC, and as well, having a bit of a temper it seems.
But what's interesting is Democrats seem to be sticking by him. There's been very few people calling for him to resign in the actual party.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:09)
Yeah. This is not good. Ken Martin can't raise money and Ken Martin can't do media.
So what does Ken Martin do?
If he can't raise money and he can't do media? It's a real question. But hell, Democrats do not want to call for him to resign. And so we have Democrats who are scared of asking him to resign. So Greg Meeks said he doesn't think that he should resign. You know, look, it's hard to get people to resign. It's clearly time for Ken Martin to resign. This article has a lot of quotes. It's from Notice about members of Congress saying they don't think he should resign. But obviously he should resign. I mean, this is just very stupid. And it's nice that Democrats support each other. But this is probably time to stop when it comes to this anyway.

**Jesse Cannon** (5:03)
Yep. So the FDA, who, as we know, just can't stop winning. There's just things going so well with our food supply.