The Keith Edwards Show - Jamie Raskin Says What No One Dared Over Trump's Market Collapse

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Keith Edwards discusses the April 5th protest in D.C., where he interviews Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Maxwell Frost, and MoveOn's Rahna Epting about economic concerns like tariffs and the market collapse, as well as frustrations over the continuing resolution. They emphasize the critical role of public pressure, legislative action, and defending democracy in today's turbulent political landscape.

1,300 locally led events all across the world because it turns out fascism isn't very popular in this country or in the world. Maxwell Frost. Hey man, good to be here. How are you? I'm good, you know? I feel great now being with the people. There are so many elected officials that could be here and only a few have shown up. Why are you here?

Well, I believe in mass protest as a corrective to authoritarian movements in government. Rana, your executive director, move on. organize this. Is this what you imagined? I mean, honestly, it exceeds my expectations. There are around 100,000 people out here in D.C. today. There's a half million R.S. VPs across the country. Why do you think this is such a big day? This is important because when you have an authoritarian trying to take over a country, hand it over to billionaires. You have to do two things. You have to do at high levels. You have to have a legislative strategy. That's where I come in, where we have to not be the minority, but be the opposition. But then the most important thing is the people,

being in the streets, being at the nation's capital, and being in districts across the country. And I actually saw this is an international thing too, that there's people internationally rallying as well, saying hands off of the United States. It's the impacts the whole world. We had some historians come and talk to the members of the Democratic caucus about this. If you have just a legislative strategy, you can only succeed in defeating coup makers about a third of the time. If you have only a mass popular strategy, you can beat them about a third of the time. but if you have a mass popular protest activism strategy plus an effective legislative parliamentary strategy,

you can beat right-wing coup makers and authoritarian despots two-thirds of the time. So it's no guarantee, but this is a necessary, even if not sufficient measure that we need to be taken. We didn't plan for this to be a huge event. We just planned for it to be one of many, but this is turned out far beyond what we thought we would get. And that just shows you the power of the people,

and the concerns folks have all across this country and they're people that were coming here from New York, from Maryland, from Virginia, from all around the East Coast. When you have both of those, then you have the best chance at preventing this authoritarian administrative coup that's going on. Both is what we need and both is what we have. A lot of the people who subscribe to me are really frustrated with the Democrats because they feel like they are the leaders. We elected them to leave and they're they've done nothing. It's not like Project 20, was the secret.

So what happened? I can tell you what's happening with me. I think at this point, people need to figure out what their role is and do it fully, right? So for me, I'm on the road with Chris Murphy. We're going to Republican districts and bring those messages there.

But in the institution, we have to use all the tools that we have to delay, to obstruct what's going on in the House and in the Senate. The Senate has more tools to obstruct, and I'm glad to see some of the, them are starting to use it now. But our vote is the one thing we have that no one else has. He'd like to think he's a dictator, but he's not a dictator yet. We still have an independent

judiciary in America. We still have a free press in America. We still have the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly and the right to petition for redress of grievances. So he'd like to be a dictator, but he's not yet. And he's making himself more and more isolated every single day. I mean, the tariffs have brought down the opposition of the world, and he destroyed trillions of dollars of the wealth of the American people. But part of the reason I think he's doing that is because oligarchs need this sort of chaos in order to gain even more control. Would you say that's a strategy of his, or do you think he's just doing this because he thinks

it's the right move? Yeah, I'm not enough of a psychologist to be able to tell you why he's doing it. It is a nightmare for the American people economically and socially, and politically, I have every reason to believe it's going to be a nightmare for him. That we are not powerless, we are not alone. I think one of the things I was so inspiring about this morning as I drove down here is the entire a big main street of D.C. was filled with people coming outside of their homes, elderly people outside of nursing homes with signs. You know, people are doing honking waves. It's not just happening here on the mall, but it's all over the city that people are making their voices heard. And it's reminding us that there are, there's a ton of us in this country that are not okay with what's happening.

And we aren't by ourselves. We have power in numbers. And you said there's a legislative strategy that needs to be met with want to protest. What is the legislative strategy for the Democrats? Well, you know, we don't give away all of our tips in public, but we, you know, succeeded. But there's a strategy.

Oh, there's a, yes. I think a lot of people are worried there isn't. Oh, no. I mean, we're meeting constantly. And we shut down the House essentially this last week by creating a coalition with some Republicans. So we're always looking for that handful of Republicans who will come over.

They have a very slender margin of just three or four votes at this point. We always have the filibuster as a backup. And the truth of the matter is, is that Trump right now has circumnavigated and circumvented Congress. He knows he could never get any of this stuff through Congress, like shutting down the Department of Education or USAID. He could never get that through. And that's why he's acting unlawfully, unconstitutionally, just to dismantle these agencies. But ultimately, our legislative strategy is to win back Congress. Obviously, I'm very disappointed with what happened with the continuing resolution, right?

We cannot let that happen again. That's one of the very few instances that we're going to actually be able to stop something. So being here shows everybody and even some of those Democratic senators that you have to cut the bullshit and we have to vote together. We have to be together, especially when it matters. Yes, and I think about, you know, Donald Trump does not mind blowing up the entire world economy. I think we can stop a continuing resolution. Yeah, no, exactly.

And for him, like, he says, oh, we're going to be a little uncomfortable. It might be a little uncomfortable for a billionaire, but it's untenable for working people. And they want it. Aligarchs like when there's a recession because things get cheaper. Oh, things get cheaper, and then guess what?

They have the ability to take over more. Yes. More commerce say, oh, look, we fucked up Social Security. It's failing, so now we need to privatize it. All of this is about privatizing everything, and we can't let that happen. And so electeds need to do their job. The people are doing their job.

This is what we need right now. Jamie Raskin said that you kind of need a little bit of both. You need the legislative buy-in, and you also need the people standing up to it. And I'm just so grateful that this is happening because I think so many people feel alone. When you're online, it can feel like you're the only one who is seeing the truth of what's going on. And it's nice to be around like-minded people who are kind of like, this is not okay. Yeah. And also remember, like, this is a big tent.

We don't all, all of us here don't agree on everything. But the one thing we agree on is that it's not okay to take a wrecking ball to our critical lifelines, like Social Security and Medicaid, to veterans benefits, to education. It's not okay to threaten our rights and our freedoms, like our very right to protest and free speech. They've been flirting with, attacking. Like, these are all things that every American can agree upon, and that's what unites us. A lot of people who are watching are hopeless. They feel a little despondent.

What makes you feel hopeful about all of this? When I was a kid, my dad used to say to us, when everything looks hopeless, you're the hope. So I tell people we're feeling hopeless. There are people in your life who need you to galvanize and catalyze them. And we got a protest of here, I don't know what is, 150,000 people or something, who these people are organizers, and they're going to go back and they're going to be the spark

that motivates even more people to get engaged. Awesome. Well, thank you for lighting the spark. You bet, man. Thank you so much.