Molly Jong-Fast on The 2025 Elections!
The Al Franken Podcast
The Al Franken Podcast
4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Molly examines NYC's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and why his campaign was so successful. Can he actually deliver on the promises he's made in the campaign? Molly shares her thoughts on some lessons Democrats nationwide could learn from his win.
All of this is going on during the longest-ever government shutdown with a President holding a "Great Gatsby”-themed party at Mar-a-Lago while the economy struggles and Trump continues his tariff wars.
Plus, Molly gives her perspective on the redistricting battles around the country, the nationwide ICE raids, Trump corruption, and more!
LISTEN to Molly's podcast “Fast Politics”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fast-politics-with-molly-jong-fast/id1645614328
READ Molly’s latest piece in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/opinion/trumps-great-gatsby-party-did-not-accept-snap.html
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change. |
| 0:09.5 | Molly Jungfast joins us. |
| 0:11.7 | Again, you know Molly from MSNBC and now as a writer for the New York Times. |
| 0:18.2 | And she joins me to talk about Tuesday's elections, which went well for |
| 0:23.1 | Democrats. Something went well for Democrats. Hey, don't jinx it, Al. Hey, I'm celebrating it. Democrats |
| 0:31.1 | won big all over the country. Maybe, my theory is, maybe because Americans don't like Trump so much, or at least the job he's doing. |
| 0:45.5 | Two new governors, Mikey Cheryl in New Jersey, who was supposed to be in a squeaker against Republican Jack Chatterrelli, whom Trump campaigned for by Zoom. |
| 0:59.6 | Cheryl kicked his ass, won by 13-point margin when the experts said it was going to be a squeaker. |
| 1:07.9 | Cheryl was roommates with Abigail Spanberger in Congress, both members of the |
| 1:14.0 | class of 2018 when Democrats picked up 40 seats. That was after the health care fight when |
| 1:21.4 | John McCain put his thumb down to the relief of Americans who had finally figured out what Obamacare really did |
| 1:29.9 | for them. Spanberger was expected to win and did so going away by 15 points statewide. |
| 1:38.3 | Virginia, of course, is home to a lot of federal employees. Many of them were fired by the Trump administration, |
| 1:48.4 | Doge. OMB, Secretary Russell, vote famously said that he wants federal employees to be in trauma. |
| 1:58.0 | Well, I wouldn't say that the Trump administration is in trauma this week, but Democrats |
| 2:03.3 | in Virginia picked up 13 or 14 seats in the state legislature, which means they have the votes |
| 2:11.4 | to gerrymander and add one or two Democratic congressional seats. I say, go for it. Of course, Proposition 50 passed |
| 2:21.7 | overwhelmingly in California, which should give Democrats the five new seats to offset the five |
| 2:29.3 | new Republican seats that Republicans added in Texas. All this is terrible, by the way. This is not |
| 2:36.9 | how congressional maps should be drawn, but they started this year in Texas. Of course, |
| 2:44.9 | red states will actually end up picking up more seats this way, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina have already added |
| 2:54.1 | Republican seats. Nationally, they'll probably end up with a few seat advantage from these |
... |
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