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President Biden is back on vacation at Lake Tahoe as the White House prepares what is expected to be billions of dollars in additional disaster relief funding, made more urgent, of course, by the wildfires in Hawaii. That's on top of a separate request coming for extra money in Ukraine. And helping us put all of this together is Bloomberg White House correspondent Jordan Fabian, And it's great to have you here.
Jordan.
Thank you. You're just back from the trip to Hawaii.
You were on Air Force one for that trip with President Biden, so we might as well start there. I'd like to ask you a little bit about what you saw, but importantly, the President is going to be asking for billions of dollars for FEMA was already in need of money. How much worse did this make the financial situation?
Joe? It seems to get worse by the day.
Just being on the ground there, the pictures in video don't do it justice the damage. It's as if you know a foreign army had dropped incendiary bombs on the city. There's just nothing left and it all went away in an instant. So you're not even not only talking about rebuilding, but in the moment you're still trying to recover people who may have died.
You need to take away all of.
The hazardous material from all the buildings that burned down, and then you need to start thinking about rebuilding.
So this is going to take years, and it's going to take billions and billions of dollars. Billions is what we're talking about here. And all we keep hearing about is that the government is about to shut down because nobody can agree on just basic government funding.
So what are we in for here? I didn't even ask yet about Ukraine?
Right, It's going to be very complicated.
September, as you just laid out the fiscal year and September thirtieth, Congress needs to figure out the budget for the next year, and that you know, that's on discretionary spending, all the all the line items. And then in addition to that, they're talking about this supplementary package for twelve billion dollars in disaster relief, and then also that about thirteen billion dollars is in there for Ukraine military assistance.
And so the thought now, you know.
People hypothetically speaking, that that money might get attached to a stopgap bill to kind of stop the government from shutting down right while they figure out the bigger questions about the federal budget.
And while Speaker McCarthy and others in the Freedom Caucus say, no, it's got a clean cr how's this going?
Well?
This, yeah, the House Freedom Caucus, which is this radical group of conservatives in the House who have really forced McCarthy's hand throughout his entire speakership, say they want things attached like, you know, border new border security provisions, you know, stripping money from the perhaps the prosecutors investigating Donald Trump, and some things that Democrats just won't go for. So that complicates the immediate question of whether they will be a shutdown.
Not to mention the broader budget debate.
White House has two separate I know we're getting wonky here. What are these two separate requests or one big ask for disaster relief in Ukraine?
Right now, it's one big ass.
The entire package is forty billion dollars, and that has a lot in it, you know, a lot of emergency requests.
Now there's a chance that could get split.
And now I want to throw something else at you, Joe, which as I talked to Senator Brian Shotts of Hawaii when you're out there, and he was saying that the delegation is actually thinking about about making an additional request just for Hawaii because the building costs could be so high. Right now, the disaster estimate is five point five billion dollars, and if you think about the twelve billion dollar figure, that's almost half of that. And that's for every natural
disaster all around the country for a whole year. So we're talking a lot of moving parts here.
So this was quite a trip. The President's not getting a lot of credit for it. I just keep seeing stuff on Twitter's falling asleep and a meeting. Whether that I don't know if that actually happened. The narrative is that he was talking about how hot the ground was and that he almost lost his corvette in a fire.
You were there.
Is that fair?
After all the people he met, with all the touring that he did. Realizing it was later than some people might have wanted.
Yeah, look, I think a lot of what the president struggling with is that first impression he made when you know, he spoke, He spoke about the fires, and he took five days in between talking about it again. And in between is when he was asked about the death toll and said no comments. So a lot of people have that in their mind. I think a lot of the things on the ground with him were cherry picked. The
thing about the ground being hot. He was actually meeting a cadaver dog who's been going through the wreckage wearing boots, wearing boots, and so you know, that's what he was commenting on. And you know, we drove in his motorcade along the road. You know, there were certainly some Trump supporters there, people raising their fingers, middle fingers to Biden. There were, yeah, there were some of that, but there were a lot of people who were all so excited
to see him. We were in a community meeting where he gave some remarks about how the US will rebuild the way the people now he wanted to be rebuilt, and he actually stuck around for over an hour afterwards to talk to people one on one.
And so, yeah, there's definitely a lot of people.
Look, there's a lot of people who are angry about what's happening, and so there's gonna be a lot of raw motion. But he did go out there and try and make a good impression. Yeah, understood.
Did you see this from the air or was it by traveling?
We saw both, Joe.
So at first we were in helicopters accompanying the Presidential helicopter Marine one. We did a flyover of Leahina, which is the historic town there that was the hardest hit.
And then we landed and drove.
In to Front Street, which was really the epicenter of the damage. And they were just as I said, good, entire city blocks just gone twist and metal. You can still smell the smoke in the air. The President spoke up beside the famous Bandyan tree there that's been standing for one hundred and fifty years that's really become a symbol for the community, and he used that as sort of a metaphor to say, you know, this tree may have been scorched, but we will rebuild.
I'm sure you'll never forget it.
And I really this is one reason why I really wanted to talk to you is that story is being told.
Terribly well right now, so I appreciate it.
Jordan Fabian many thanks for talking to us as always here on Bloomberg sound On My Pleasure.
Jeff, thanks, you're listening to the Bloomberg Sound On podcast. Catch the program live weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and.
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As we move to the Congressman looking forward to talking with Congressman Seth Molton, the Democrat from Massachusetts with us here on the fastest show in politics. Congressman, thanks for joining. It's great to have you back. Of course, your view is a Democrat from Massachusetts, about the whole debate tonight might be interesting, and I'm going to ask you about that, but I do want to start with the matter at hand here. As we were discussing with Jordan, he's just
back from Hawaii, he's seen the damage firsthand. And as we juggle these requests, the supplemental requests for billions and disaster relief for Hawaii on top of what is needed in Ukraine, hearing threats of a government shut down. Do you see any of this actually being approved in Congress?
Well, Joe, first of all, it's great to be back, thanks for having me. And yes, I think that people understand that we need to get aid to Hawaii. Most people, including most Republicans in Congress, understand that we need to get aid to Ukraine. They're just afraid to say it publicly because they get so much backlash from the far right. The question, of course, is how long it will take to actually work out a deal and the way that the far right extremists in the Freedom Caucus have a
stranglehold on Kevin McCarthy's speakership. That's I mean, you said it yourself. That's exactly the problem here, that's the political obstacle to getting these things done.
Is this all the same conversation congressman about funding the government as well as these supplemental requests? Or could it be that congre risks emergency a disaster relief through for instance, and then has a longer argument about funding the next fiscal year.
Well, there are a lot of different ways that could this The gould play out but the problem is you don't have reasonable people in the room. And let's also step back a second, Joe. The reason we're here in the first place is because of the total dysfunction of the Republican House, which hasn't passed hardly any appropriations bills.
I mean, I said in the House Armed Services Committee, and one thing that we hear year after year after year is you can't just give us continuing resolutions that basically just copy last year's budget for this year because they can't make any changes. They can't innovate, they can't invest in new things that we need to keep our
nation safe. Guess what the world changes, technology changes. We don't want to be buying the same weapons systems, the same ammunition, whatever it is, the same computers, the same software that we bought a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. I mean, that's common sense, and yet we're debating whether we can just get a continuing resolution through that in and of itself, is not what we need.
We're in this place to begin with because under Republican leadership of the House, they can't even pass basic appropriations bills to fulfill the budgetary needs and requests of For example, the Department of Defense, and even the things that we in Congress have already approved in our debate through the committees, like sitting on the House Armed Services Committee. We have a very bipartisan bill come out to fund the Department
of Defense. But if we can't update the budget to meet the requirements of that bill, because they're just going to copy what we had last year, they can't even pass the appropriations bills. That's a terrible place to begin with, and now it's looking like it will be even worse because they can't even do that.
How much.
Well, we've got a supplemental request as well for funding in Ukraine, and I know that's becoming a more difficult conversation and some doubts in the intelligence community about whether this kinter offensive was worth the investment, whether it might be.
A partial failure.
Should these be pulled apart so we can deal with the matter in Hawaii and deal with FEMA separately from the war in Ukraine.
I think realistically they should not be pulled apart, because the only way that you're going to get the kind of Republican support you need for Ukraine. Even though like I said, there's a lot of hypocrisy going on here because behind the scenes, most of these Republicans are supportive of Ukraine. They understand how important supporting Ukraine is for our national security and happy to go into that in detail.
But the point is that despite the fact that behind closed doors a lot of Republicans support Ukraine, they're not going to do so publicly. They're real hypocritical about it, and so therefore it's really important that you do put these together in a larger funding package so that we can get it across the finish line. That might not be the answer people like to hear, but that's the political reality of the dysfunction that we have right now in the Republican Caucus.
It's hard to not discuss the political reality in Russia as we talk about Ukraine. Congressmen, we have breaking news right now from Interfacts that have any Pregosion.
The Wagner Head were former Wagner Heads.
Has been listed among passengers aboard a private jet that has just crashed in Russia. Inter Facts reporting this citing Russian aviation authorities. This is just breaking news. We've heard a lot of things about mister Progosion, but if this is real, Congressman, we had folks on this program saying he should avoid tall buildings after what happened with Vladimir Putin.
What does this tell us?
I mean, frankly, this is like the least surprising news of the day, because we all expected that he wouldn't last long after threatening Vladimir Putin, and some people said, oh, he'll survive a year, some people said less than that. But there's no question that Putin's out to kill his rivals, and it sounds like that's exactly what he's done to Progosion today.
Remarkable if this turns out to be true next week. In our remaining moment here, Congressman, I know something that is very important to you and your colleagues on the Armed Services Committee.
You, as a combat.
Veteran and a marine, the anniversary of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, bringing back some tough memories of the war and for the administration. What are your thoughts as we approach that day.
Well, it's a solid anniversary because it was a disastrous withdrawal, and I'm here as a Democrat not afraid to say that, you know, so, don't think I'm just a partisan critic here, I'm I'm bipartisan here. Of course, there were failures under multiple administrations. President Trump clearly had no plan for the withdrawal whatsoever, but nonetheless it happened on President Biden's watch, and the Biden administration still has a lot of work
to do to help clean up the mess. We have some estimates around two hundred thousand allies that we served alongside, that we pledged our lives to protect, that we've just left behind, and they're being hunted down by the Taliban, as we talk in the radio today, every single day and night. The Taliban are after these guys because they worked with us, because they risked their lives, not just
for Afghanistan, but for the United States of America. They did a lot more than most Americans will ever do for our country, and we got to get them out, and the process is moving too slowly. There are veterans across the country, and I should say across the world, because of course it was an international coalition over there.
I've got friends in the British military who're trying to get their Afghan allies, for example, and so the veteran community is very upset about this situation because we don't leave people behind and yet here we have, though it's still within the power of this administration to get these people out. It's hard. There's a lot of euroaucracy. You've got to contend with the domestic politics of Republicans, who are,
you know, refuse any immigration whatsoever. But this is a place where among veterans there's a strong bipartisan consensus that we've got to get these guys out, we've got to protect them and their families, and we're not going to rest until that job is done.
We talked around the anniversary of the Iraq War invasion about the authorization for the use of military force. This is still on your to do list, Congressman, When does it happen?
There's a lot that's still on my to do list, I'm sorry to say, but you know, the point is that it's Congress's responsibility to have a real serious debate about sending young Americans to fight and die in our wars, and Congress is just completely pushed aside that responsibility by just having administrations, again democratic and Republican administrations, just go back to these authorizations or the use of military force there were past twenty years ago, in a totally different world,
and that's because the colleagues of mine are afraid to just have the debate before the American people about whether we should have troops in these places overseas. Just like so many Republicans right now to support Ukraine and classified briefings, but then go out on box news and say that they don't want to see more money going to Ukraine. I mean, they're just lying because we know that what
they really believe or really understand. But the point is we've got to have some political couradge heare to have this real debate. We owe that to the American people, whose sons and daughters we asked to fight, and most of all, we owe it to the troops who were telling to go put their lives.
On the line.
So this is a place again where veterans on both sides of the aisle tend to agree, and you've got a bipartisan consensus that we have to have these political debates. But under Democratic leadership of the House, under Republican leadership of the House, saving you say the same thing for the Senate, it basically hasn't happened in twenty years.
Twenty years.
I'll end with this Congressman, and I appreciate your time today. We've gone a little bit over here, but everyone's talking about the debate, and I suspect that that Afghan withdrawal will come up, along with funding for Ukraine and a number of things that we've talked about.
Here are you watching? What are you watching for?
Look, I'm not going to watch this first debate. I'm going to get the you know, I'll read the reports from you and others the day after to see what I should know. I think I'm going to take my kids out to dinner because I'm home for a change, which is not all that common in this job. But look, this is basically a circus when it should be a really serious debate, and there's going to be everybody's talking.
Everybody's just going to be talking about what this means in terms of Trump, when they should be talking about what they're going to do for the American people. And I think that's a good question that anyone watching the debate should take into this this circus. If that's what it is, you'll hear a lot of complaints. But the question everyone should ask is what's your plan? What are
you going to do to actually change things? Don't just complain about whatever political hot button issue of the day is. Ask how these candidates are actually going to lead. That's the question that we should ask.
Hope you have a good dinner with the kids on the North Shore. Congressman Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee, among others, including.
The China Select Committee. We thank you as always.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound On podcast. Catch us live weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Kayleie, we knew that Rudy Giuliani was in Atlanta. He flew from New York this morning saying I'm a big boy, I can handle it. And apparently he does now have a bond for his release.
Yeah, this is great reporting from our Eric Larson, who works on our legal coverage here at Bloomberg. Apparently bond is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in this case in Georgia. Of course, a lot of the bond deals we've seen coming through, like Sidney Powell earlier, around one hundred thousand dollars for former President Trump, who we expect to appear in Fulton County tomorrow.
It's two hundred grand, two hundred thousand and four.
The former president here is Rudy Giuliani, of course, the former mayor of New York, walking out of his apartment this morning on his way to the jet, where he was greeted by a group of I don't know.
If I flee today, but if I do, I plead not guilty and I get photographed. Isn't that nice? A mugshot for the man who probably put the worst criminals of the twentieth century in jail. You find a prosecutor who has a better record of mine in the last hundred years. I bet you own or a mayor, they're going to figurd to degrade themselves by doing a mug shot of me.
A mug shot. Indeed, that's going to go for Donald Trump as well.
It's interesting that he chooses to highlight his record as a prosecutor, because, of course he used the Rico Act, yes, and a lot of different individuals, including going after all five leaders of the Five Families at once several decades ago. And now here he is being charged with a violation of the real Act in Georgia's.
Incredible stuff, and is Rick Davis reminded us last hour the man who invented the purp Walk as we know it, taking CEOs out of their offices in handcuffs, parading them before the press. It's just just an incredible moment, if not an ironic one. Sydney Powell, by the way, still set to unleash the Kraken has bond set at one hundred thousand dollars, so we've seen a few.
Shades of bail here.
I guess Wendy's with us, which I'm glad that Wendy Benjaminson is here at this moment. Bloomberg Washington Senior Editor, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for Rudy Julian.
He's not worth two hundred, That's.
What I'm wondering.
I'm waiting for the true social post to come out any minute now, to go way a minute. How come I had to pay two hundred thousand dollars Donald Trump? How come Rudy gets away with one hundred and fifty and Sydney only one hundred. I don't know what they're thinking, except maybe it's the number of criminal accounts against them. I'm sure there's actually logic rights, but you know, I don't think Donald Trump's going to be happy about that.
Well, and of course it's going to be his turn tomorrow, right, he said himself on True Social God. Arrest is Thursday for him in Fulton County, when we get the mug shot. We have all been waiting for Wendy.
Maybe the mug shot there's he's you know, the Fulton County sheriff at one point said absolutely anyone else. But then there's some talk about whether Fannie Willis will actually do that or not, because it's not like we don't know what he looks like, so you know, they may do it. But I think I think if anyone we're going to do it, it would be the Fulton County people because they're going they're treating this like any other state case.
We heard from John Eastman when he showed up yesterday, this, of course, the former attorney who helped to kind of craft the scheme allegedly with the fake electors and the effort to overturn results of the twenty election.
He says he's going to fight.
He's these apparently not going to cooperate and that isn't a real surprise. But listen to his commentary on this moment.
It represents a crossing of the rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances as troubling. It targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide, and which was attempted here by formally challenging the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.
You can weigh in on that defense if you want. I know you're not a legal analyst. But is this the crossing of the rubicon? Or do we crossed the rubicon on January sixth?
Well, that is the heart of the question, Joe, I mean, yes, the country has crossed the rubicon. Now we have a former president of the United States under four criminal indictments, we have top attorneys under criminal indictment. But yes, is John Eastman putting the cart before the horse? Was the moment the tempted coup on January sixth? And the question that we're still wrestling with and the prosecutor seems to believe is whether the acts these people took were actually
crimes or not. It feels like it. It walks like a duck, it quacts like a duck. But I'm not a lawyer. I don't know, and that will be actually for twelve jurors in each case to decide. But you know, he's not wrong that we're in another reality here.
Yeah, and you mentioned the fact that this is indictment number four we're talking about. It's by far the largest. They've asked for a trial date early next year. But when you have nineteen individuals to prosecute, it seems like the general consensus is that this is not going to
happen anytime soon. It is within the next week though, on the twenty eighth, so just five days from now that in Washington, there will be hearing to set the date in this In the January sixth case that was brought federally by Jack Smith, they want that one to start on January second. So we're going to get some further indication here on how quickly these things are going
to move forward. At the same time, we're talking about a debate, the first Republican primary debate today, and it just goes to show you how many different distractions there are going to be in this campaign cycle when you have all of these legal issues.
Right, I mean, the front runner is not going to show up at the debate, but he's going to surrender to the Georgia State or Fulton County authorities tomorrow. It's completely, completely bizarre. But the debate tonight will be really really interesting to see who the possible alternative to Trump will be. Every Republican voters ever decides he's not their guy anymore.
There are different ways to look at this. That's one of them. Is this actually the best thing that happened to all the other candidates, Because some would say, hey, look there's going to be no ratings.
It's a tree that falls in the woods.
They're all going to just kind of yell at each other waiting for the real candidate to show up. But maybe this is a huge benefit for somebody who could not otherwise break out absolutely.
I mean, tens of millions of people have watched primary debates, and even though those who aren't getting attention or saying, well, no one pays attention to laughter Labor Day, but tens of billions of people watched the Democratic first primary debates in August of twenty nineteen and in August of twenty fifteen, there was that first Republican debate where Trump was the
breakout guy. He was in the single digits of polling and then you know, he he had his viral moment insulting Megan Kelly, the Fox former Fox broadcaster, and then he you know, had Rosie O'Donnell and with the list goes on if people he insulted in that but these but that's where he had his breakout moment. These guys
are not Trump in terms of marketing themselves. But these guys, I'm sorry, these people, including Nikki Helly and we'll we'll see tonight, but tonight is their first and biggest chance, yes, to break out of the Trump and the eight other people.
Yeah, but they're going to be forced to talk about him. Our understanding is that the Fox moderators are planning to use soundbites of the former president in their questioning to work him in.
Well, they can do it from the X interview interview that yes, it's going to be going on exactly at the same moment talking.
Which is a more important conversation. Kayley, I mean, you can't really have one without the other.
Right, Well, this is the question. I mean, we were talking just in our last segment with Libby Cantrell of PIMPO about the policy substance we could get, and my question was how much policy substance matters from all of these other candidates who are not the front runner, when ultimately the policy that the market may have to contend with is the one who actually has been non an me ultimately and at the moment at least it looks
like Trump. So as we're looking for policy clarity, maybe it's not yet time for financial market participants.
Spain, I think the one way these guys can break out because it's all Trump and the other people. So now maybe one of them could break out with some really interesting policy. Whether Ramaswami breaks out with his let's find out how many federal agents were on the nine to eleven planes He said that today with some of his other odd out of out of step and say with the mainstream Republican orthodoxy on Ukraine funding, you know, we'll we'll get to see a little more about who
these people are. If Brett and Martha, the the moderators of the debate actually get to ask them those questions.
I wonder if the real show ends up being in the spin room. Yeah, because they've banned the RNC has banned Trump surrogates. But Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt gats Gold anywhere? Is that going to be the real fight we're talking about?
Yes?
Yeah, absolutely. And I can't imagine a locked door that Marjorie Taylor Green doesn't try to go through, so we'll have to see how that works.
There's a loophole, right, they can be invited by someone.
That's true if they're a guest on a news network, that's there. But would you like to be that news network the one inviting Donald trumps surrogates into the tent.
And who's going to organizers might not love that.
I don't know a Fox would do that. It's that would be upstaging their own show, that's right.
Yeah, and they're not inviting.
I don't know.
This is going to be interesting?
Can I just asked quickly, how would you stickle? Are you going to do this tonight, Wendy? You watch the debate live and then watch the X thing after. I'm trying to figure out how to divvy up my time.
Yeah, how I appreciate it. I'm gonna have a lot of screens open at once. But we do have people assigned to the Trump Show, we have people assigned them the debate, and we're going to try to put it all together in one big.
That's going to be advantage Elon, advantage Trump. I'm thinking, because you can go back and watch that anytime you want. Right, people get you know, you check out an hour a Milwaukee, then they.
Go on X or whatever the heck we call it.
Is Elon going to do something special, Like when you log on tonight, there's a big is there fireworks or something?
I don't don't. You have a lot to learn.
We'll find out more.
Questions than answers, even with Wendy Benjamins and great to have you.
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