Jeet Heer & Cindy Holscher

**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. The Economist's latest poll has Trump at a 34% approval rating. We have such a great show for you today. The nation's own Jeet Heer stops by to talk about Trump toying with declaring an emergency for the midterms. Then we'll talk to Kansas state senator and Democratic nominee for governor in the state of Kansas, Cindy Holscher. But first, the news.

**Jesse Cannon** (0:34)
Smiley, we saw just this ridiculous press conference where Trump couldn't be bothered to stay awake yesterday, where him and RFK. Jr. decided to destroy our vaccines because RFK is a delusional freak who reads kook commentary on vaccines. And Bill Cassidy, he's so upset. Who could have stopped this?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:54)
Yeah. Oh, wait, Bill Cassidy could have stopped this by not voting for RFK. Jr. as giving him the number one health position in our government. Look, here's the deal. This is, I'm going to read you guys the second headline, the sort of deck in the New York Times article about this, because I think it's an important, very relevant piece of reporting.
OK, so Trump signs executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccines. And then here's the deck.
It is not clear whether the order, the president's third to address the topic in less than a year, has any legal power. That's because it doesn't. Look, what will this do? It will create yet another world in which Trump supporters decide they don't want to do vaccines, which is stupid and bad. But it's theater to try to shore up the bays and try to make Trump's people happy with him. Why is he doing it? By the way, vaccines are actually pretty popular. Childhood vaccines are not like COVID vaccines. They're really an 80-20 issue if you look at the polling. And they've only become more of that since the measles outbreak. So Donald Trump is trying to get to his base. He's trying to get them excited for the midterms. He's trying to get them to turn out. He brought RFK into his administration for two reasons. One, because he likes candidates, because he feels that they are good for, you know, the TV of his, the theater of his administration. But the other reason why is because RFK has a real, had a real group, had a real contingent of moms, of yoga moms who didn't like vaccines because of COVID. That group is not what it once was. And remember, RFK has disappointed those people in numerous ways forever. Chemicals back in the water, Roundup no longer banned. The Trump EPA is like, is like practically a PR firm for chemical companies now. So the idea that RFK Jr. is somehow, you know, bringing anyone to the table is negligible. And that is why we're seeing these insane MAGA vaccine mandate situations. But it ultimately it's political theater as much as it's anything.

**Jesse Cannon** (3:18)
Definitely political theater. So I think this is pretty interesting that we're increasingly, increasingly seeing that Congress does not want to be accountable and do town halls. This used to be a thing that was a given that you had to do. I think back to during the Bush era or even the Obama era, that we would see every summer, we could kind of know August would be reliable headlines of chaos in the town halls. That there'd be all these interruptions, there'd be these headlines, trackers for opposing campaigns would find footage of somebody telling your constituent to shut up and things like that. That is disappearing because all these people know what they're doing is very unpopular.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:59)
Yeah. I mean, look, here is the situation. Republicans know that they're in trouble, especially in the House, but also in the Senate. And here we go.
So here are some of the people who do it. When they show up, they get flooded with protests. So only 11 lawmakers have town hall scheduled for the rest of August. Only 11 This used to be so common. And it's because voters are mad, right? The Republicans got screamed at a lot in town halls last year because constituents were mad about Doge, federal layoffs, and the Trump administration's spending cuts.
Here's a great example. Chuck Edwards, you know him. He was recently in the news because he was censured for sexually harassing his aides. That guy who was actually not running for reelection because of that, was booed, heckled, and repeatedly interrupted in a March 2025 town hall in Asheville as he defended Donald Trump and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. And during a 2025 town hall, constituents shouted at Brian Flood, liar and you don't care about us. So, look, people don't feel good about the economy. They don't feel good about DOJ. They don't feel good about data centers. They don't feel good about a number of things, and we see this in the polling and they're mad at Republicans and some Democrats and they're mad at leadership and they want to change. And so what we're seeing is members are hiding from their constituents.