Josh Marshall & Michael Waldman

**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, avoid or zip those polls, says Trump has his lowest approval rating yet at 33%.
We have such a great show for you today, Talking Points Memo's own Josh Marshall stops by to talk about that very poll. Then we'll talk to the Brennan Center's own Michael Waldman about election security coming into the midterms. But first, the news. Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Michael Waldman is the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.

**Josh Marshall** (0:44)
Molly, America's debt, it's getting more expensive. And you know who keeps spending like no other president before him? Mr. Trump.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:54)
Yeah. Who could have seen it? Who could have seen that the guy who bankrupted all the casinos would now take a hand at bankrupting the American government? By the way, I remember, I'm old enough to remember earlier on in this administration, where the richest man in the world said he was going to end the debt. Do you remember that with Doge?

**Josh Marshall** (1:15)
I just remember that this deficit is always a problem when there's a D next to the president's name, but then once that's gone, who cares what happens here?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:23)
Here's the problem, though, is that the debt that we are is actually getting more and more expensive, and there's a reason for that, and it's because it's more expensive to hold the bonds, and that is because people are more and more worried about America. None of that is good. Look, one of the things that has given us a lot of prosperity in the last 50 years is that we've been able to have this, the dollar has been the world currency, which means that we have been able to service our debt at a much cheaper rate than the developing world. And here's what happens, as the full faith in American credit gets lessened and lessened, we start to have more expensive borrowing, which ultimately can lead to real problems, especially if your country saddled with as much debt as we are. So remember, a lot of our spending is just servicing the debt, because debt is expensive. And we're getting further and further from God's light for us, which is being able to afford our lifestyle.

**Josh Marshall** (2:36)
God's light, huh, Molly?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:38)
That's right. I've found religion, and it's in not servicing the debt.

**Josh Marshall** (2:43)
Who do after six years see this side of you?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:46)
By the way, everything that Trump is doing is expensive, like these multiple foreign wars and the numerous building projects. I mean, obviously, the building projects are not as expensive as, but a billion here and a billion there starts to really add up. But also, just the way that Trump does the tariffs, and then having to repay the tariffs, and then doing the tariffs again. At every point, my man is running the federal government, like a Ponzi scheme where it's never going to come due. You know who gets schemed is the American taxpayers.

**Josh Marshall** (3:24)
Speaking of, so we have decided to let regulation and food inspections just go to the wayside.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:32)
Have some diarrhea lettuce.

**Josh Marshall** (3:34)
So one of the other side effects of this, I've talked about this before, but you know, I go to a restaurant where since I am the politically minded person, the chef seems to know to talk at while I sit there. He loves to tell me about the price of beef because I've listened one time and now what we are seeing is because of beef shortages, we're now losing jobs as Tysons in Jocelyn, Illinois is firing 2,500 union jobs because they actually don't have enough beef to service them and things like screwworm and things like that. Well, they kill off cows.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:10)
Basically, what we're seeing in real time is what happens with deregulation. Basically, Donald Trump is the jungle, the Upton Sinclair book.

**Josh Marshall** (4:23)
Good reference there.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:25)
I'm very smart, many people are saying.
But so basically, he's cutting regulation. And so we have diarrhea lettuce, we have salmonella, we have all of the things that the government is supposed to. And again, like I was reading an article about the diarrhea lettuce problem, and we have some 64 food inspectors. I mean, we have some crazy number of food inspectors. It is like so low, you think it's Donald Trump's polling. And the point of this is not that it's not that we're saving money this way. In fact, it actually ultimately is more expensive because he's missing big problems that are going, right? He's missing with the Cytosporin or the government is missing problems. And so to end up catching up, it ends up being very expensive, right? They have to send the food inspectors, the Tyler Farms food inspectors to Mexico. And that ended up being more expensive than it would have been to just catch it the first week, as opposed to in week four or week five.