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He saw the post on truth or whatever the truth social from Donald Trump about the Jeff Duncan if you don't know that name is the former lieutenant governor of Georgia. Will bring everyone back up to date here, and he had tweeted or xed that he was told to appear Tuesday before at the grand jury. Donald Trump on truth quote, I am reading reports that failed formal lieutenant governor of Georgia,
Jeff Duncan, will be testifying. He shouldn't. I barely knew him, but he was right from the beginning of this witch hunt a nasty disaster. Let's bring in Michael Zelden. I've been looking forward to hearing from Michael ever since he left the country. He's back with a former federal prosecutor, former special counsel to Robert Muller while at the DOJ. Michael, does that sound like witness tampering?
Well, everything that comes out of Donald Trump's in respect of all of these cases is right up against the line of witness tampering. I don't know whether anyone would
actually charge him with it. What'll be most interesting to see is whether Judge Chutkin, the one who's handling the January sixth cases, will sanction him, because she just cautioned him yesterday the day before yesterday, to not make these types of inflammatory statements, and then he turned around and sort of thumbed his nose at her and made inflammatory statements.
And so we'll see what happens. But it is surely something that he is purposely doing to try his case in the media because his biggest problem as a defendant is he cannot testify in trial because he cannot take the stand, swear to tell the tooth and then tell the truth. So he's got to do this in the media because he's got no other forum by which he will get his story out there.
Well, and you mentioned Judge Chutkin, who sided partially with his defense marly with the prosecution in that protective order last week, but she is not immune from his social media kind of rampage. Honestly, in the last twelve hours either, there's more than a dozen posts related to the different legal cases against him. In one, he calls her a highly partisan judge. She obviously wants me behind bars, very
biased and unfair. Does this make the prosecution's job easier all of this and his defense attorney's job harder.
Well, it makes it harder for the defense attorney because the defendant Trump, and that's what she called him. She said he's a criminal defendant and he should be considered nothing else. The lawyers said that yes, Trump would honor the protective order, and of course the next day he didn't.
And so it makes it very difficult for the defense lawyers who have maintained their credibility with the court and essentially say I can't control my own client, and that always puts them in a trick bag about whether they're going to continue the representation. I don't think it makes it any easier for the prosecutors because he's not talking about the substance of the matter that will be at trial.
It's really more the optics that he's talking about. It proves the point to those who want to believe that he's a lunatic out of control, and it proves the point that he has a First Amendment right that he's entiled to make and so it's really just sort of neutral. You know, Paul Simon saying once that a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, And so people are hearing what they want to hear and disregarding the rest. In respect of this, I could.
Say that about so many different things in politics right now, Michael. A lot of the reporting is centered around a possible rico charge or charge as I wonder if you feel that coming and in this case, if you can talk to our listeners about what that would mean, because based on what I have learned about this, Donald Trump may not actually have to be directly connected to what was going on as long as the organ is he was at the top of is implicated here.
How do you see it?
Right?
So, the Georgia rico law is a little bit different than the federal rico law. And federal rico law. You think about a mafia organization with a copo and then people underneath, and the coppo doesn't have to actually have his hands touching anything as long as he is part of that enterprise structure. In Georgia, it's really like a conspiracy.
Plus some people have called it conspiracy on steroids, And what it requires, principally is that there be a conspiracy, which is an agreement by two or more people to commit an unlawful act and then some act in furtherance of it. The RICO says, if there are multiple crimes that are all related toward the end of the same end,
then that meets RICO. And so in this case, I think what you'll have here is a conspiracy essentially of multiple defendants with an aim which was undertaken by the commission of various crimes, and that'll be the state reco charge. So really it looked like a federal conspiracy charge similar to what we saw in January sixth. These guys agreed Trump and his unindicted co conspiracy in that case to interfere with the orderly transfer power by committing the following
four crimes. I think that's what we'll sort of see in Georgia. And the advantage of that to a prosecutor is that they get to tell a story. They can say, on this date, our story begins, and here is what happened throughout the middle course of it, and this is how it all ended. And that is a crime and that's called state rico, and we asked you to convict.
Okay, So, in terms of the timeline for a case like this, especially given the reporting we have seen that more than a dozen people ultimately could be charged here, and considering the facts that, as we've reiterated time and again, this would be the force indictment of the former president just one of the many legal trials he could be facing down. Would the timeline look like here going forward once charges theoretically are brought.
That's a great question, and we don't know the answer. Normally, the more charges and the greater number of defendants means the longer into the future the trial date is. People speculate that that's the reason that Smith charged only Trump
in the January sixth case, to keep it streamlined. I don't know how long things will take in Georgia, but I would expect this could be Unless there's some expedited process here, this could be the very last case to go forward and probably go after the January sixth federal case, if the judge holds true and has a trial on January second, as the prosecutors have requested.
Spending time with Michael Zelden, the former federal prosecutors been awfully helpful through all of Donald Trump's legal affairs with us here on Bloomberg as we consider what happens to the co conspirators unidentified, of course, co conspirators like Rudy Giuliani,
Sidney Powell, those names who have become connected to this effort. Michael, I wonder your thoughts on this CNN story that prosecutors in Atlanta are now in possession of texts and emails that directly connect members of Donald Trump's legal circle to the early January twenty twenty one voting system breach in Coffee County. I bring it up because the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, actually replaced machines in that county and I asked him about that following the dominion settlement.
Here's what he said.
It was corrupted by election official and county election director. That was a violation of state law. And I'm really big right now being investigated by our state election board. So there's a deep dive into that, and so we want to replace the mission means we don't believe that anything happened, but if anything did happen, we wanted to pull those machines, get them off, you know, take them out of the field and bring and put it brand new machines, So no one could question what the results
would be in Coffee County. But like I said, that's an ongoing investigation. State Election Board has that and they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the.
Law, to the fullest extent of the law. Michael, that was back in April when that dominion settlement happened. In our remaining moment here, how important will evidence like these texts and emails be to connecting the Trump legal team, that entire group of people to this effort.
Well, I think it's significant in one major respect, which is Donald Trump has argued that all of his calls to Rathenberger and Governor Camp and others was a first man and protected free speech that he's allowed to call whoever he wants to call. In this case, this is an action. So if he's authorized an illegal access to a computer, on authorize access to computers is a crime in Georgia, that's not speech any longer. That's action, and
action is always criminalized. And so this is a difference between speech and action, and there is no First Amendment defense, So it is significant if they can tie it back to Trump.
Michael, it's great to have you back. Michael Zelden, former federal prosecutor with US on Sound On with Kaylee Lines in Washington. I'm Joe Matthew. This is Bloomberg.
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The headline on the terminal. The US has adequate funding for the response. In Maui. I'm Joe Matthew along with Kaylee Lines in Washington. And it's been a big question here, Kayley. As the President spent time, well more time in rehob with on vacation, and reporters couldn't get an answer out of him. When he took a bike ride yesterday, they of course wanted to talk about this thing in Hawaii.
Can you come talk about can you come talk about Mawi?
President?
And he kept on right another point in Rehobe with reporters are yelling at him. I believe our own Justin Sink was one of them and got a no comment yes, as opposed to thoughts and prayers or something.
Yeah, very interesting and interesting tone shift as well from the White House today in the aftermath, the President tweeting a multipart thread about the response, saying his prayers are with those impacted. Every asset we have will be available to them. So it seems like kind of a course correction here.
Perhaps I guess that's true, And it brings us to the matter of funding for this. There's going to be an ask if it hasn't already been made for supplemental funding for FEMA for dealing with obviously the fallout here in Congress that was already struggling to figure out funding for a government whose fiscal year ends in a month and a half or something, joining us to talk about
it as our expert our appropriations. Kind enough to spend time in this chair for us last week, the great Jack Fitzpatrick Bloomberg, Government Congress supporter, Thanks for spending time with our listeners last week.
Jack.
It's good to see you. You must be dying for lawmakers to come back to work. Yeah, but you don't really have to wait. There's this conference call tonight that's probably gonna get a little chippy, right.
Yeah.
They have been trying to figure out lawmakers, especially in the House, where they stand on emergency funding, Ukraine funding, avoiding a shutdown during the August recess. It's a little hard for us to report out when they're not here
walking in the hallways. But there will be a conference call tonight for House Republicans to discuss funding the government, and a key part of that is this request for additional money forty billion dollars total for Ukraine and related needs and also for FEMA, because FEMA needed money anyway, they were getting low in their disaster relief fund budget. It may be the case that they need to discuss
more funding. Eventually, they absolutely will have to discuss more funding for the longer term rebuilding process in Hawaii, because FEMA isn't the one that rebuilds homes. They're the emergency response. But the House Republicans are still sort of in the process of figuring out what are our demands, what are
the conservative demands? Can you attach supplemental emergency funds to a stop gap to avoid a shut down, they still have a lot of pretty fundamental questions to answer on their own position.
Well, and I would imagine the emergency fund as well as the funding for border in migration, which also was included in that supplemental request, or a lot easier for the Republican Party to swallow than perhaps Ukraine a specifically, which is the bulk of what was requested.
Yeah, that makes sense, and you would think so. I would point out though that there was a statement led by Warren Davidson from some Freedom Caucus members that was pretty much a blanket negative statement about the request, and it didn't distinguish saying we support disaster aid that portion, but not Ukraine. So there might be some work to get people on board, because this also is in the broader context of that debt limit deal where they set limits on spending and.
No one wants to stick to Yes, No, very.
Few people want to stick to it. Traditionally, you'd have wildfires or if there's a bad hurricane, lawmakers would say that's exempt from the cap, we don't need to offset it. But even last week we heard the likes of french Hill, who's not some Freedom Caucus members say, if you want supplemental funding, you're probably going to have to offset it. So, yes, Ukraine is a tougher sell to the ultra concervatives than
wildfire relief. But they haven't really shown a willingness to go with the President's proposal on any of this yet.
Bringing back to the first of June, I'm guessing Jack was standing there, Senator Lindsay Graham.
I'm talking to the President Zelenski at one o'clock today. He's confused. I want him to know that this budget deal does not take off the table the ability to help you train with their liberation efforts, that there will be more money coming through a supplemental I want our own military to hear that there's a chance to repair some of the damage.
This is when the outrage first, the freak out first happened when it became clear than in this debt ceiling deal that was looming that there would not be as much money for the Pentagon as expected. And so then I guess there was another side deal in the Senate around that Jack that brought us to this situation. We're in here where the Senate the House are both playing off different sheet music.
Yeah, Senate and House Republicans have as many differences on spending almost as House Republicans and House Democrats. Lindsey Graham has been very very vocal right from the start that emergency funds should be used to provide more defense spending than under this framework in the debt limit deal, not even just if something unforeseen happens with Ukraine that there
should just be more money. So Graham also himself has said directly to me, I think when we need a stopgap, which we obviously will need to get past September thirtieth, we need to tack on Ukraine funding disaster aid. He's also said, and this wasn't addressed directly in the request food aid Global food Aid, because that's still sort of a tangential Ukraine Russia issue and he wants more funding
for that. So you're getting a push from some Senate Republicans and Susan Collins is on board with it to add money, and they are fighting with the House Conservative Freedom Caucus members about as much as the Democrats are fighting.
But that would come on that would come as part of the cr though, is what you're suggesting. If there is one, All this would be attached separate from the actual budget for the next fiscal year.
Right, that is the idea from the likes of Lindsey Graham. I think that's one unanswered question is does everything go together if you can get some of the Freedom Caucus members to say okay to disaster aid, and then that actually can ease the path to avoiding a shutdown and getting the continuing resolution, and you separately then negotiate Ukraine funding that has not been ruled out yet. This is
what we call packaging and sequencing. And yes, it's very inside baseball, but it's important to how they're gonna try to avoid a shutdown.
At the end of this conversation, Kali, Yeah, I just wonder what the real likelihood is that they successfully avoid a shutdown, because I've had people tell me. Congressman Seth Molton, for example, said there is a quiet understanding that the government is going to shut down, right.
Poet, Yeah, there is definitely a threat of a shutdown October first. It also is a real threat for when you get toward January first, if they get a stopgap deal and keep the ball rolling past September thirtieth, that does not mean they're out of the woods. There's that threat of the automatic one percent if they're using a
continuing resolution after the end of December. I don't know when the greatest threat of a shutdown is, but when you see the huge gap between the different parties, including Senate and House Republicans, nothing looks great and it absolutely is a possibility that it falls apart at the end of September.
That's why Libby Cansfell was saying January one is the real deadline here that Jack, that would be fifteen days before Iowa.
Yeah, well, it'll all heat up with a lot of I guess, a harsher political spotlight as people get on the campaign trail, as the specter of the presidential race becomes more clear, it can be tougher and tougher to actually strike deals. And that's what happens every other year as you get closer to the election. Nobody wants to take a bad deal.
So I know you'll be listening to this conference call at six pm. What tangible signs of progress should we be looking for between now and actually weeks from now when the House returns to Capitol Hill. How much work really is going to be done even though they are still technically in recess.
If the House Republicans can come up with a clear plan to hold more votes, because they tried to start holding votes just on their own bills, and they had one and then they the second kind of fell apart. If they can have a clear agreement among themselves to get the Conservatives on board, and that's the kind of thing they're going to be talking about at this conference call, that would be a better sign than if things really
melt down. So really, the progress that you could see in August is if House Republicans come up with a more specific and concrete plan for how they want to move forward, rather than bickering between the Conservatives and the leadership and that kind of thing.
Got it.
Call later starts at six o'clock, That is.
What we've heard. This will not be a public call, so we'll see what people tell us.
Everybody is going to conference. Oh can you imagine the zoom chaos?
No, don't at all.
It's going to proceed.
But would you please mute yourself a congressman, you're not on mute Jack, Great to see you, Thanks for coming in. Jack Fitzpatrick Bloomberg, Government Congress reporter. With a little bit of sense of what's coming. You can let the quiet August pass you by, but there's a lot on the way in September.
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 listening on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
I got to talk of contagion today and over the weekend with some tough news economically from China, Kayley, that has a lot of folks wondering that, you know, this new call of a soft landing might be changing again.
Yeah.
The the thing is, this is the second largest economy we're talking about. Even though it feels like it's a world away. The US and China are inextrictably linked economically, right, heavily reliant on China as a trade partner, and as China goes kind of the global economy may go as well, given its importance for all those reasons. So when you see things like they're dealing with deflation, having issues with trade, the property sector very much in turmoil, a lot of
concern around credit. To your point about potential contagion, it's not necessarily encouraging headlines for market participants.
No far from, which is why we thought the column here on Bloomberg Opinion by Andreas Kluth was important. It's time for a pause in US hysteria about China. I love a contrarian view, and I'm not sure this actually is one, but what we've been hearing in the echo chamber here inside the Beltway would suggest that because both Democrats and Republicans can't seem to run fast enough from Beijing right now, or run fast enough toward Taiwan.
Yeah, or just kind of adopting the hawkish toward China narrative. In general, it feels like everyone has to do that President Biden, including like we saw at his donor event in Utah last week in which he said China's economy was a quote ticking time bomb.
That's right.
Andreas joins us right now in studio here in Washington, d C. By the way, welcome to Washington. We're delighted to have you here in the bureau. As you write, prudent d risking one of our favorite terms.
As well.
We went through the risking, the coupling, I can't remember. The rest must stay proportional and targeted. What would define that if you were advising the administration.
What would define that as Actually, for example, what they did last week before Joe Biden lost it at that fundraiser. I think that was the day after or something like that. Yeah, but before that, they took a very you know, in the tussle between the Treasury and the Department of Defense.
It seemed that the Treasury went out in that one and for a pragmatic modern and measured a proportionate but still hawk as you approach, which which was that they're going to have limits on American investments in Chinese companies that are involved in quantum computing, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. And that makes sense because those are the things you
might need in the next war. And if it comes to that over Taiwan or the South Tennessee, no one's no one here or certainly not me and no and I know it is suggesting to to to not prepare for that scenario, but to go beyond that and talk of not de risking the term you just used, but the decoupling, and especially to make that a bidding war in the in the upcoming election season in both parties, but especially on the Republican side, to Santas and is dangerous.
It's just also stupid. It's not in America's interests. It's it's not traditional American foreign policy. We wouldn't want to impoverage one point four billion people. First of all, we wouldn't want a humanliate them. Also, that's their narrative anyway, and also we want them to keep buying our stuff. We just want to prepare to win a war if it comes to that.
Well, and so to your point about everyone going to the hawkst direction, that's the hysteria to what you refer in this piece. On your point about this executive order from last week being very narrow in scope, the rhetoric from the administration around that has been this is about national security interests. We are not trying to hold China back economically. They've repeatedly said this. And yet the point you're making is that the US may not have anything
to do with holding China back economically. That may just be happening independent of what we do.
Well, that's the sort of cheeky Mark Twainyan kind of or. And in this case, there's a Napoleon allegedly said, never interrupt your enemy if he's making a mistake, and a thesis that a lot of people here are also talking about because you might consider contrauring is by Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute of Economics, who's saying, you know, as you just pointed out, Kayley, China has been surprising
us all year with negative news. When we thought, after the zero COVID policy, after the drop, that it might get positive, they're in fact becoming negative. And Adam Posen is saying, well, this is long term, and we haven't
understood how negative this is going to get. Why because Chi Jinping reverted to communist or authoritarian type and started fiddling arbitrarily with draconian, abrupt, whimsical, capricious measures in the economy and has freaked out his own population so that they're saving or the equivalent of hoarding and not investing or spending anymore. So productivity, they have a democraphic problem,
they have these other problems. But they're saying, if we're projecting less than five percent growth from next year, it's going to be a lot worse than that. So it could be that the Chinese have just sabotaged their own economy. Why would we try to do a more of it just because there's an election season and then be and then look like the bad guys. We don't need to do that. We could maybe start talking cooperatively with them about some other things.
Okay, so we've referred to the U I guess hot mic moment that the President had at the fundraiser in Utah last week. He called China's economic situation a ticking time bomb?
Is he right?
Well, the Adam Posen theory or the theory that I'm interested in now and that I agree with, is that it's not so much a ticking time bomb, but this sort of I don't know what it's a slow and gradual metaphor. I need like a like we thought this was a rise and rise and rise story and that's how they painted it. Since thanks shaping, it's in fact of a rise and rise and now reversion to the mean. They have an aging population. This may may not go anywhere.
What you're saying with the spillover I guess to talk today is is this going to be Asian crisis two point zero?
Yes?
I covered Asian chrisis one point out of Hong Kong. I don't think that's going to happen because they have control over their exchange rate and things like that. But that could happen and that would be really bad news for all of us. So we don't want that. We just don't want them to get so big that they can fund Belton Road initiatives in Africa and Asia and displace us. That's all we do, I would say.
Okay, So just to kind of wrap things up here, as you were alluding to, we need to tread carefully so that you can focus on areas of cooperation with China. I'm thinking things like climate change, for example. Really, given how tense this relationship is and when you have potentially incendiary rhetoric coming from the President of the United States, what actually is your degree of optimism that that cooperation can happen when we're just starting to even really talk to each other again.
It's more optimistic than you would think. That the President lost it a little bit because even though it's true, I think he called them terrible guys, bad guys, something like that, which is objectively true, it's just not the president's job to say that. You leave that to Kaylee, Joe and me.
Yeah, yes, it will be clear about that.
But the people who have in recent years really, I mean, since Trump really done the damage? Is she jinping? And with something that you may know is called wolf warrior diplomacy. It's sort of a bad film, atrociously, it's like Rambo for Chinese people, with the roles reversed. And so he's told every all the diplomats be a wolf warriors and kiss everybody off. And that has to stop.
Yeah, so you just moved here from Germany. Welcome to Washington. Thank you, don't be a stranger. We both want you to come back off. I want you to do that. Andreas Klouf, how about it? Everybody, This is Bloomberg.
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Six tweet thread six by my count here by President Biden today. Not exactly the most prolific on Twitter, even though I'm supposed to call it X Is that an ex thread?
Now? I can't.
But it's all about Hawaii. The President says every asset we have will be available to victims of the fires in the tweet threads as the Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering temporary shelter assistants, encouraging people to apply for help. And this follows. At least one good opportunity over the weekend to talk about it would have been the bike ride in Delaware. Can you come talk about Mali? Can come talk about they got a wave?
There? He goes.
The big bike ride on Sunday was nice out, but it of course led to a whole round of criticism about what's the president got better to do here than deal with the situation in Hawaii? Is warm? People are exposed to the visuals horrifying visuals from this fire in Lehina, and the President is taken to Twitter to talk about it on a week by the way, that was set to celebrate the first anniversary of the IRA, not your IRA,
the Inflation Reduction Act. Incidentally, the first response as I look on Twitter X it was a five tweet thread, I was wrong. The first response that I see need to rename Hawaii to Ukraine. Then Biden will shower it with money. We reassembled our panel, Genie Schanzano.
And Rick Davis.
I'm glad to say are with us Bloomberg Politics contributors. Is this fair? Genie? Did he miss an opportunity?
He did miss an opportunity, and you know, Justin asked him the right question to say, you know, give a no comment to that. I was wondering did he not hear the question? Did he misunderstand it? Because this is like politics one oh one. You're the president of the United States, what about you know, we're thinking of everybody suffering. We have you know, sent aid already because the reality is both the governor and the Senator thank the president
for acting so quickly. Six hours he declared a presidential declaration. That's really really fast. They were thrilled by that. He you know, that is the right approach, But a no comment sounds tone deaf and all I can imagine it is not the empathetic Joe Biden we've grown to know and love, and so you know, maybe he misunderstood or didn't hear it, but yeah, he missed an opportunity and they tried to go back on X and fix it. But he's got to say it in his own words.
Uh, I guess we are really calling it x now. This moment, here's just a couple of seconds long, was tweeted by the r n C. This is another moment at Rehoboth Beach. Well, you can talk about the Hawaires podcast the president no comment was the answer. Why no comment? Rick, I surely you would not have advised him to say that. What should he have said?
Yeah, don't they.
Give presidents a brief that says hear how to not screw up something like Katrina. I mean George Bush said the state, good job, Brownie, And so you would think that in a natural disaster, as Genie said, you know, our empathetic commander in chief would say something with his heart goes out to the people of Hawaii to the
horrible loss. I mean, there are a hundred things he could have said other than no comment, which is now being compared to what he said when they also caught him by surprise during the East Palestine toxic contamination when he said no comment there. So President no comment is not going to be what people want to hear from him. So his staff needs to really understand that there's no such thing about being on vacation when you're president. Of the United States.
So what should he do, Jeanie, he can't fly over it. We're both referring here to Katrina here and good job brownie. Former President George W. Bush do in the flyover he was heavily criticized for. This is eleven hours away. What does Joe Biden do?
He should be expressing concern and a commitment on the part of the federal government to do everything to help the people who are suffering there. We are looking at what fifteen hundred people still missing, almost one hundred passed away at this point. The devastation is traumatic. It's the worst firefighter firefighter fire rather that we've had, and he needs to express that he and his administration are on
top of it. The resources are there or coming, and most importantly for him, his heart goes out to the people suffering. You hardly have to be president or a politician to say I'm very sorry and I am praying
for in thinking of everybody impacted. Empathy is what he needs to express, and he needs to do it in his own words, and then he can say he will visit when the time is right and he's not interfering with their ability to help you rescue people who may still be have an opportunity to be rescued and to help people out.
And again, meantime, this is the administration is hoping to talk this week about the first anniversary of the IRA, which is seeming less possible because of all of this. Then you turn on Sunday morning television and you've got a Democrat from Saint Paul from Minnesota urging the president not to run for reelection. Here's Congressman Dean Phillips.
People want to turn the page. I think that's fair to say. As a Democrat, I adore Jobiden. He saved this country. He can cement his legacy. My real call to action right now is not about me. The call to action is to ask the president to pass the torch.
That's clearly not in the works, Rick, at least that we're aware of. If your publicly, Roger Stone, I guess would tell you otherwise. But how does the president manage calls like this?
Well, largely he'll ignore it. They'll be a cavalcade of Democratic office holders and power brokers who call this this poor guy up and wood shed him. And it does come actually at a pretty sensitive time in his sort of emergent presidential campaign. But I would say too, one of the things that's going to come up with this fire situation in Hawaii is that he's asked for a supplemental which increases FEMA substantially to handle these kinds of disasters.
And when that hits the floor, he better be prepared much better than he was this weekend to make a very clear pitch for this, because that you don't want the natural disaster assistance overshadowing or succumbing to a problem when you also have your Ukraine assistance attached to it. So he's he's going to have to have a campaign around that, and it's and it's going to have to be very public and very forceful.
We're going to talk about this a lot or next hour, these supplemental budget requests, but it does make you wonder what we're heading for when lawmakers return to town, although, as we'll learn a little bit later on in the program, they're not waiting. There's an important conference call tonight the Republican leadership to talk about these budget matters. We'll get there. Rick and Jeannie with some final thoughts next as another
Republican candidate leaves a mark in Iowa. By wrapping this is Bloomberg, you're.
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Carbon whole narrative. Last week on the Republican campaign trail was a surgeon vivek Ramaswama. All right, maybe not surging, but his numbers were up finished fourth in the New York Times Siena poll in Iowa, specifically setting him up for what could have been the biggest moment of his campaign, wrapping eminem on the soapbox at the Iowa State Fair. Listen to them get into this. That's they love it. They can't get enough of it. Kayley Lines is even dancing.
And it brings us back to this whole question Rick really, I can't know. Rick is not a fan Genie. I'm guessing that you are. It brings us down to the question though, of likability. We heard about this with Ron DeSantis, right. Donald Trump's more quote unquote fun. How do you manage that part of a campaign?
Rick, Well, uh, I think it's managing itself. I mean, we're witnessing the future of national politics. The fact has hit the stage, our first millennial candidate for the GOP for national office. And look, he's super smart, he's telegenic. He's doing a great job as a candidate. But I'm going to take some getting used to when I see a presidential candidate start to wrap.
I'm guessing you're not gonna tell Joe Biden to do this, Genie, maybe you will. All I know is the woman standing behind Vivek there at the fair worker looked very wary about what's going on.
I would pay Joe Biden to do this. Bite your tongue, Joe, please. And I'm very confused because the rhyme from college was deveake rhymes with cake, but we say the vex. So I wish he would clarify this. He did this in college, he's doing it again. I just have to remind him. This is from two thousand and two, so the young kids in my class, this is sort of before they
were born or cognizance. So he's gonna have to move it up a bit, even the millennial of vivike Ramaswami a little bit behind the times.
The vake I'm psych I have so much to learn still, So it's basically like he was singing Glenn tunes up there is what you're saying, Genie. Thank you so much, Rick and Jennie, our signature panel, the best in the business.
We thank you.
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