Rick Wilson & Ben Wikler

**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 Troy Jackson has effectively secured the Maine Senate Democratic nomination. We have such a great show for you today, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Trump's new hate election strategy.
It's not that they hate elections, it's that they hate Democrats. To win the midterms, we'll talk to the former head of the Wisconsin Democrats, Ben Wikler, about his new book, This Is the Plan, How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy. But first, the news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:44)
So Molly, Trump's little buddy, Mike Johnson, you may know him from his masturbation monitoring app, he has abandoned the SAVE Act, even though Mr. Trump really, really wanted him to stick to it because he's got to get this budget bill passed.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:58)
Okay, so I still think this budget bill is not going to pass. This is reconciliation.
It's another reconciliation bill. Look, they need money for the war that Trump said he was not going to put us through. They do need it. But I think this is, I don't think it's going to pass. First of all, Trump doesn't really give a shit. All he cares about is the SAVE Act. There are not the votes for the SAVE Act. This weekend, Lisa Murkowski wrote an op-ed saying, you're not getting the SAVE Act, okay? And again, the SAVE Act is not going to go in reconciliation. So you can't pass the SAVE Act without killing the filibuster. You can't kill the filibuster. Republicans won't kill the filibuster. So tell me how you're going to pass this. If you can't pass it in reconciliation and you don't have the votes to kill the filibuster, you can't do it. It's like, it just won't happen. And besides, and again, this is the thing about this bill, and this is the thing about a lot of this Republican legislation. You don't see it so much at the federal level because they don't pass a lot, but you see this a lot in these Republican state house bills. A lot of this stuff is written really poorly and haphazardly, but this is all voter suppression play. Anyway, Trump knows he's unpopular. He knows that he can't win. He's not running on anything.
So he just wants to make it harder for people to vote. That's it.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:28)
You convinced me. So were you in the city this week for how bad the air quality was?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:33)
Yes, it was bad. I was standing on the street in orange smog, coughing, going, it's over 300

**SPEAKER_2** (2:42)
I definitely gas lit my wife and was like, it's not so bad that it started coughing. So it's quite bad. But because of that, Mr. Trump says he's going to tariff Canada because of it.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:51)
Yeah. So let's just talk this through for a minute, because I think this is really important. These wildfires were caused by climate change. Climate change is a real fucking problem. And we're seeing it much more in the summer.
We had wildfires, then we had a heat dome which trapped the smoke, which is why we had in New York really bad air quality. You know where they had worse air quality? In the Midwest. Yeah. Michigan. Right. In states that were closer to where the fires were, because the fires were in the west or the central or west parts of the country of Canada. So instead of wanting to do something about climate change, instead of being concerned about forest fires, Donald Trump is laser focused on trying to do something bad to Canada. I just think this is important to talk about. Trump has, you know, his instincts are insane. Remember when he wanted Greenland? He still does.
Right. That's what this is like. It's like, you know, Trump wants to create wars where there are none. So again, he's already trying to tear off Canada, but he wants to blame them for the smoke, as opposed to doing what a normal person would do, which is to try to do stuff about climate change. He wants to do stuff about Canada. Very unsurprising, but very annoying. And again, he has said, We are holding Canada responsible for the fact they are not properly maintaining their forests and bushes. The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted and unhealthy air. By the way, the idea that he can't make the connection between fires and climate change is just insane, but Republicans are blaming Canada for the climate change related forest fire.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:49)
Seems like their vibe.