‘Everyone Else Can F*cking Drop Out’: Molly Jong-Fast on the One Republican She Wants to Face-Off Against Trump

Molly Jong-Fast, special correspondent at Vanity Fair and host of the Fast Politics podcast, has amassed a huge audience online thanks to her sharp commentary — from a liberal perspective — on the increasingly deranged political environment we find ourselves in.

Jong-Fast joined me on this week’s episode of The Interview to talk about Wednesday night’s Republican debate, the candidates’ “incredibly lame” jokes, the 2024 election more broadly, and Donald Trump’s chaotic campaign marching forth despite his many indictments.

Jong-Fast told Mediaite she could only watch the debate — featuring seven Republicans polling far behind Donald Trump, who didn’t show — for an hour because at “some point I was like this is just diminishing returns.”

“There is no one on that debate stage who is going to be a presidential nominee, and there’s probably very likely no one on that debate stage who is going to be a vice presidential nominee either,” she said.

“The problem with the Republican Party is it’s not really a Party anymore, right? It’s just Trump,” she lamented. “So, if you had a normal party you could say, ‘Well, [North Dakota Governor] Doug Burgum — not a gorgeous, not a Gavin Newsom type, but extremely smart in some ways. Like he was saying some things about government and about the way tax incentives work that was pretty interesting. He was saying sometimes the government puts its finger on the scale when it comes to EVs or other things that might not be the best for capitalism. Hard to argue with that.”

“But it doesn’t matter because in their party there’s no room for that,” she said. “There’s no policy for that. You had Trump counter-programming, lecturing unions at a non-union shop. Up is down. Left is right.”

While Jong-Fast is not hopeful that anyone but Trump will secure the GOP nomination, she “continues to be impressed by Nikki Haley.”

“I don’t agree with her on anything. I don’t particularly want to see her as president but I think she’s very smart, and I think she gets a few zingers in there,” she said. “Everyone else can fucking drop out. Excuse my french. DeSantis should save what little is left of his dignity. There’s no there.”

During the wide-ranging discussion Jong-Fast said Trump needs to run for office in order to stay out of prison as he has four criminal indictments looming.

“The man is drowning in legal problems and he needs to pay for his lawyers. So while Trump is running for president. He’s also running from jail and accountability, and I think this is a perfect storm for him. He can’t drop out even if he knew he wouldn’t win tomorrow, he can’t drop out because everything he needs to do is to raise money,” she said.

As for the business mogul turned president actually serving jail time, Jong-Fast predicted there is “zero chance Donald Trump ever ends up in prison.”

“I think a more likely scenario is that there’s some brokered house arrest,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any world in which the Secret Service should be in prison. Look, Trump needs to be held accountable. Will prison prevent Donald Trump from doing more crimes? Here’s the question with imprisonment, what is the goal? The goal with imprisonment is to prevent criminal behavior. I think it’s a huge distraction. I also think it really gets his supporters agitated. I understand that it makes some people but I don’t believe it’s for the greater good.”

Watch the full interview above. Subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.