Jim Acosta & Matt Dunlap

**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 a top general was fired after disagreeing over a Kid Rock helicopter probe. We have such a great show for you today, The Jim Acosta Show's Jim Acosta Stops By to talk about Trump's half-hearted attempts to steal the midterms. And we'll talk to Matt Dunlap about his run for Maine's contentious Second District. But first, the news.

**Jesse Cannon** (0:39)
So, Molly, we've done a lot of segments on this podcast, talking about the effect of social media on kids. There is now a landmark settlement where Metta is going to be paying out $17 billion, and they're going to have to do a ton of reform on how they allow minors to interact on their various platforms.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:57)
Yes, we know that social media is addictive. We know it. And Metta is now agreeing to pay $17 billion, which seems like a lot of money, but for Metta is actually not so much money. This is both a big deal and not a big deal. Here's why.
It is very important that we hold tech companies accountable. We regulate them. We make sure that they do not take advantage of our kids, which they already have done quite a lot. Remember, there is almost no tech regulation that has been put through. I mean, literally almost none. It's just a very stupid time to be alive. Metta, they haven't done anything. They haven't made the platform less addictive. At every point, they have not done what was the bare minimum. And so we have a situation that's like this. It's incredibly dispiriting. They're paying a lot of money. They will pay more money if these other tech companies are held accountable to.
So what Metta wants is to also see a punishment of Discord, roadblocks, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. Not because they give a shit about your children, but because they really want all other tech companies to be punished because they don't want Discord to get to do all the addictive stuff they're not allowed to do because they're worried it will drain their market share.

**Jesse Cannon** (2:31)
Granted, Discord doesn't really have its predatory practices in place. But roadblocks, a different story.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:37)
Right. The point here is that they want to make it so that this is where we are.

**Jesse Cannon** (2:44)
I think we should applaud, though, that this is more teeth than nearly every punishment these companies have ever gotten. These attorney generals should be applauded for not watering this down.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:54)
Democratic Attorney General's Rob Bonta, who is also working on this crazy paramount deal, doing a really good job here. It's important to remember, I'm just going to read this because I think this is really important from Playbook in 2022, that he was majority leader then. Chuck Schumer's daughters both work at tech companies. Allison Schumer works for Metta.
Jessica Schumer is a registered lobbyist for Amazon. So just remember, when you ask why there are no tech regulations, certainly the right is super duper corrupt, but the left has its own problems when it comes to regulation.

**Jesse Cannon** (3:38)
Yeah, couldn't agree more. So the appeals court has threatened the GOP's cash advantage. I think this is an interesting development that wasn't on my radar, Molly. What do you see in here?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:48)
So a federal appeals court rules Tuesday.
This could erase the midterm advantage for Republicans. So a two-to-one ruling would block Republicans from using these cash-rich committees to buy political ads at discount rates. They're going to appeal it. It's going to go up the chain, you know, like a lot of this stuff. It is going to keep getting litigated. But the rates paid by super PACs and other outside groups are often several times higher than the candidate rates. And this is a case that was brought by four Democratic candidates running the cycle, Ossoff, Sherrod Brown, Cooper, and a representative in Michigan. So this was a response to the US. Supreme Court striking down limits on how much committees can spend in coordination with candidates.

**Jesse Cannon** (4:43)
So there's an interesting report in The Atlantic. The Qataris aren't having the best time after doing all this back-scratching for Mr. Trump.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:51)
FYI, they had been trying to sell the plane for five years. So the Qataris gave Trump a plane and they thought it would help them. But what happened is that Donald Trump still went into Iran. And now the Iranians are pretty much bombing every one of their neighbors. This is like the worst case scenario for the Qataris, for the Emiratis, for the, you know, for any country in the Middle East that's trying to like have tourism and be fancy.