Rick Wilson & Thomas Frank

Molly Jong-Fast (0:00)

Hello and welcome to Fast Politics. I'm Molly Jong-Fast and we have such a great show for you today.

Later in the show, we'll talk to author Thomas Frank about his new book, The Creativity Con, How Innovation Became America's Biggest Racket. But first, we have The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson on Trump's very, very bad week. Donald Trump has a very bad week. I'm going to give you the highlights. Monday, Kimberly Guilfoyle asked to resign.

It turns out you can't hide your son's ex-fiance forever. Thursday, Donald Trump cancels live execution. Sorry, Whiskey Pete. Friday, Donald Trump fires press secretary, who you may remember from taking three questions on Monday.

Rick Wilson (0:49)

She was impressive. What an impressive young lady. Just really remarkable.

Molly Jong-Fast (0:54)

Let me read this to you right now. And all the while, we have this incredible story with the money for the Kennedy Center that Rick Grinnell may or may not have gotten from the Democratic Republic of Congo, because that's not at all sketchy.

Rick Wilson (1:22)

Why would you think anything from the Democratic Republic of Congo could be looked upon as scant as they say?

Molly Jong-Fast (1:28)

Turkish billionaire, Vaya, who's married to Trump's Alina Haba.

Rick Wilson (1:34)

Right.

Who is 27 years old or something like that. And look, everything with Trump this week has been a downward spiral, and nothing has gone right for him at all. He got blowback off switching of Starlink to Ukraine.

Thomas Frank (1:51)

He got blowback on everything he did.

Molly Jong-Fast (1:52)

We don't know whose fault that was, right? That's the reporting from Telegraph. Either Elon asked Trump or Trump asked Elon, or they both cooked it up together.

Rick Wilson (2:02)

Yeah. I mean, look, Trump didn't come up with that move on his own. There's no way Trump even knew about it. So Elon, I'm sure, went to him, I'm guessing Elon went to him and said, Herpty-derp, here's how you do it. Here's going to take care of the Ukrainians, shut this switch off.

Molly Jong-Fast (2:17)

You want to make Putin happy.

Rick Wilson (2:19)

Yeah. He called Whiskey Pete, Whiskey Pete said, Sure, boss, and switched it off.

But look, I mean, to my mind, the weirdest symbol of the whole week was him walking past the beast, not knowing where he was, just rolling on past the car, walking out into an empty field all by himself. I'm like, is he going to go out there and put his arms out as the UFO comes down to swoop him up finally? I mean, it was just like, it's a bad week.

Molly Jong-Fast (2:45)

His people sort of directed him to turn around.

Rick Wilson (2:50)

If this had happened to Joe Biden, Fox News 24-hour a day is the president mentally competent.

Molly Jong-Fast (2:56)

Yeah. But because it happened to Donald Trump.

Rick Wilson (3:00)

Right. It's like, oh, it's a Wednesday or a Thursday or whatever.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:03)

Yeah.

Rick Wilson (3:04)

Look, I really think we are watching.

Yesterday, I was talking to George Conway and he's like, my prediction is he's going to make it through the next two years. I said, I don't know what condition he's going to make it through in. This is a guy who looks like he's really, I mean, when he got to Mar-a-Lago on, I guess it was Friday night and there was that photograph of him at Mar-a-Lago with the half of his face slouching again, he looked like he was on desk door knocking aggressively. This guy is not in a good place.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:36)

I mean, it's a very hard job. He's 80 years old. What I want to talk about is how disinhibited he is. The disinhibition because-

Rick Wilson (3:46)

That's our code word for Donald Trump speaking fluid gay all week.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:51)

You said it, I didn't, but-

Rick Wilson (3:52)

I looked at him. He was a big, strong, handsome man. I found myself aroused in ways I did not want to admit to myself or others.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:58)

The New York Times had a whole piece about him.

It just rehashed all these quotes that he had said about these men like John Hustad. People are not particularly gorgeous looking. They're attractive. They're fine. But like, and he's talking about his butt. He's talking about his jawline. He says he's at his central casting. I mean, it does feel like he's not able to not to do things anymore.

Rick Wilson (4:29)

No, he cannot stop his mouth from saying what's ever in his brain. He comes right out and lets it rip up. Look, one of the things I found most fascinating about this is one of those weird things that MAGA finds very off-putting. They find it very concerning because one of the things they thought that Trump coded for was robust, strict masculinity. Now, I've always thought that was ironic because he wears makeup and heels and blah, blah, blah. But now they're looking around at the ex, it's like, no, he didn't really mean that. He was joking. It was completely just a joke one time that he told four times during the week over and over again about different men.