Jim Acosta & Stacey Young

**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 Ray Dalio says the AI bubble is reaching Great Depression territory.
We have such a great show for you today, The Jim Acosta Show's Jim Acosta stops by to talk about Republican Congressman Max Miller as the albatross hanging over the GOP's head. Then we'll talk to former Justice Department employee and the head of The Justice Connection, Stacey Young, about how dangerous it is to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. But first, the news.

**Jesse Cannon** (0:41)
So Molly, we are having the Senate move ahead on a bill that would avert a government shutdown. And I think it's a very interesting thing here. The base seems to say shut it the fuck down.
And as always, leadership is not doing what the base wants. What are you seeing here? I'm kind of perplexed, if I'm being honest.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:03)
It's got an emboldened Jesse Cannon because his party... No, I'm just kidding.

**Jesse Cannon** (1:08)
My party?

**Jim Acosta** (1:09)
What's my party?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:10)
Well, you know.

**Jesse Cannon** (1:11)
My wing of the party?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:12)
Listen, I'm teasing you. I'm teasing you. Your wing of the party. Okay.

**Jesse Cannon** (1:16)
The wide bobs?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:17)
That's right.
Here's the deal. This is another reconciliation to keep the government open, another stopgap spending bill. That's because Republicans cannot get their shit together to legislate. And so we're just stopgap to stopgap to stopgap. You'll remember that Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency, and they shut down the government. They could not agree on DHS, and they had the longest government shutdown ever for DHS. And they did that because they are ideologically completely at sea.
They have one thing that they all believe in, and that's field data dealer leader. So we got a quote here from the leader of the Democrats, the Senate minority leader, that is very much like the kind of thing we see from him. For months, Democrats have been clear, we want to fund the government. I don't know why. Advert a shutdown again, why?
And pass strong bipartisan appropriations bills that improve people's lives. Do you think that this administration wants to improve people's lives? I do not. Right? Democrats want, the base wants them to obstruct, and here we are. So, Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said, enabling this rule, and basically the rule is that would allow the administration to cancel grants based on the recipients if they do not conform to President Trump's political views. I swear to God, this is something they're trying to do. Okay, they want to cancel grants. These are grants like, you know, the grant to study the Osprey. Donald Trump doesn't like Ospreys, so it's canceled. A grant to study, these are like, this is your tax dollars going to science, except science Trump doesn't like. Then he can cancel it. So enabling this rule, according to Patty Murray, would give Trump the green light to take even more federal funding hostage. Of course, she's right. So it is just a complete fucking disaster. This crew cannot fucking shoot straight. And here we are in just nightmare fuel scenario. And there we go. The legislation they do is insane and bad. The legislation they don't do is insane and bad. It is just a complete fuckery over there. And they're all trying to just pass the stopgap so they can go home for August.

**Jesse Cannon** (3:59)
So we're in that news cycle where we keep finding out more and more that the DNC is a shit show for lack of better word. And there's this unreleased chapter from the autopsy report that took them forever to come out.
And it has people going, what?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:17)
So if you or I wrote the autopsy of the 2024 cycle, it might say a lot of the things that were in this missing chapter.
So basically, I want to pause for a minute and just explain how we got here. Ken Martin threw Paul Rivera under the bus. Paul Rivera, longtime Democratic consultant, is hired by the DNC to write this autopsy.
It is not released by the DNC, by Ken Martin, he decides not to release it. He gives a number of reasons why, never a good sign to give a number of reasons why. Now, the guy who wrote the autopsy is pissed because he looks terrible and he basically remember Ken Martin said the autopsy wasn't well-written, it was amateurish. So the guy who has been being maligned now is ready, he's coming back and he's defending himself. Like I just want to pause and say, all of this could have been avoided, right? You could have released the autopsy, you could have released some of the autopsy, you could have billboard it and just done a top line on the autopsy because nobody would have read it anyway.