Jennifer Welch & Adam Hamilton

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 an Associated Press poll has Donald Trump's approval rating for the economy at 26 percent. That's lower than Joe Biden's lowest economic approval rating.

We have such a great show for you today. I've Had It's Jennifer Welch stops by to talk about her new book, Not Today, Fascists, then we'll talk to Nebraska Senate candidate Adam Hamilton about his run against Senator Roger Marshall. But first, the news.

Jesse Cannon (0:43)

Molly, Trump, he's groveling.

He needs Europe to help him bring down diesel costs because, my God, are they crazy.

When I filled up my tank this week, it was twice as much as it was before the war.

Molly Jong-Fast (0:57)

Yeah. Look, this is, Donald Trump has put himself in an impossible situation. He's made gas prices higher. He spent the first half of the last two years trying to alienate Europe, trying to attack Greenland.

Well, now, right, saying that he's going to attack Greenland, saying that he's going to take over Greenland, saying he's going to make Canada the 51st state. Well, now he needs to get Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK's help because he is hoping to get them to release millions of barrels of oil from their stockpiles. Now, remember, there's a reason why Trump is doing that, because he's already released a ton of oil from our stockpiles, right? Our American reserve is as low as it's been in 20 years.

Again, I want to point out, this is because Donald Trump is worried about the price of diesel, and he's worried about it because it is breaking records and how expensive it is. It's breaking records because Donald Trump attacked Iran and that is why they close the straits. If Donald Trump would make peace with Iran, then the end again, who knows what they would want? It would probably be something less good than the Iran nuclear deal which Obama had. If he were to be able to do this, then they would reopen the straits and the cost of diesel and the cost of gas would go back down. I mean, this is really yet another one of these problems that Donald Trump has created for himself. And for the rest of us and for Europe.

Jesse Cannon (2:49)

Yeah. Something we were talking about a lot at the start of the year was we hoped that Renee Good's family would sue the Trump administration over her fatal shooting. And we've seen it come now. And this is an expansive lawsuit. Like there's even non-defendant co-conspirators in here like Chris Ruffo and Nick Shirley. It's a very, very big lawsuit.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:12)

Remember, Chris Ruffo and Nick Shirley are both people who have spread things that were not true, who were quick to say things about Renee Good, to say that she wasn't who she was, or to say that she was somehow at blame for being murdered by ICE. And so again, this family is really doing the work here.

And again, we do not have any kind of fact-checking on the Internet, right? We don't have any kind of, with the closest we have is community notes. The reason we don't have that is because Congress has never legislated any technology period paragraph. So that's why we have a situation like this. And when you have a lawsuit like this, what it does is it creates accountability, and it makes it so that people maybe don't do things like that. I mean, I almost feel like I'd like to see her sue the tech companies that spread the lies about her, which is like what we've seen.

We've seen other plaintiffs do that, like sue Metta, right?

In California, we saw a big suit against Metta and against some of these other tech companies for the information that was carried on them. And that's the only way really that we're going to be able to stop that kind of information. But anyway, this is still really good. And it is like one of the first of these major civil actions taking against Donald Trump. But I'm going to tell you that it's not going to be the last. Like we're going to see a lot more of this stuff. And I wonder also again, I'm not a lawyer and maybe we'll have somebody who's a lawyer on to talk about this. Maybe the person we should have is Robbie Kaplan. But to talk about these kind of lawsuits, because remember Robbie Kaplan is the only person who's ever gotten any accountability for Donald Trump when it comes to his sexual misconduct. So I think it is a really good example of just how the legal system, you may not get criminal charges, but you can get civil charges. And this is two different lawsuits against Jonathan Ross. He is the ICE agent who shot Good. And also, there are senior Trump administration officials who are being accused of unconstitutional negligence, excessive force, and the violation of the civil rights of Renee Good. So look, I hope that Alex Praddy's family follows suit and does the same thing. I mean, the only way that someone like Donald Trump, who is so loose with pardons, who's gotten this cart-bunch from the Supreme Court, the only way that someone like him has any accountability is going to be in the civil arena. And luckily, he's so obsessed with money, that this is something that he actually does care about, and he should be a plaintiff. I mean, especially in a situation like this, where here was a person who really was used politically by the Republicans and the Trump world smeared, treated terribly, had her, you know, just in a horrible way. And so the idea that there's some accountability here is really the one positive sign.