From Capitol Hill to courthouses around the country. It's been an eventful week in US politics. Bloomberg Congressional editor Megan Scully and White House and Politics editor Mario Parker joined me to review Speaker Mike Johnson's first stopcap spending vote and the latest in the twenty twenty four Republican presidential primary.
And Bloomberg Legal reporter Zoe Tillman will catch us up on the Fourteenth Amendment legal challenges taking place in several states aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump off their primary ballots. Will also dig into Trump's ongoing legal battles in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, d C. I'm your host Craig Gordon today on the Big Take. There's never a dull moment in US politics. Megan, Let's start
with you. Mike Johnson is only weeks into his tenure as Speaker, and he's already cleared a major legislative hurdle with a funding plan that adverts the government shut down. Tell us what's in the plan, what's covered, and what's not well.
The important thing is that it covers the entirety of the government, and it gets us through the December holidays and into the new year. Some federal agencies would shut down January nineteenth if there is not another interim spending deal or a longer term spending deal, while others, like the Defense Department would shut down on Groundhog Day, which
seems fitting on February tecod. What it does not include, however, is perhaps more notable, and that is a lot of the demands from hardliners in the House for deep federal spending cuts as well as new border policies.
We're not surrendering. We're fighting, but you have to be wise about choosing the fight. You've got to fight fights that you can win. And we're going to and you're going to see this House majority stand together on our principle and we're going to do.
That, Megan. The interim funding plan managed to pass with real bipartisan support just three days before the deadline. More Democrats supported it than Republicans. In fact, who actually voted yes, who voted against it? And how did the reaction from the Freedom Caucus differ from the last time a speaker tried this, Kevin McCarthy.
It's interesting if you look at the vote tally from this spending bill, it is nearly identical to the vote tally from the interim spending bill that got Kevin McCarthy ousted as Speaker of the House just a few weeks ago. The hardliners in the House, these ultra conservatives, the ones who've been pushing for deep spending cuts, particularly to domestic spending accounts, something in the order of thirty percent to some of these accounts, are predominantly the ones who voted
against this measure. Mike Johnson was, once upon a time, when he was just a member of the Republican rank and file, one of those hardliners who voted against the
last interim spending bill. However, he of course supported this measure, and unlike with McCarthy, who hardliners said that they did not trust from the get go, the ultra conservatives are seemingly willing to give Mike Johnson the benefit of the doubt and let him get used to the job, which he's been in for just about three weeks at this point.
Began. You also mentioned the legislation leaves out some very important things, including a funding for Israel or Ukraine. What happens next on those battles.
That is something that lawmakers in both chambers are trying to suss out right now. They're eager to leave town for the Thanksgiving holiday, so it is unlikely to happen funding for either Israel or for Ukraine before December. However, the House has passed its own Israel Aid package, which was separate from Ukraine Aid. However, that's drawn some significant backlash from Democrats due to how they wanted to go about paying for it. Democrats have also wanted to link
Israel Aid to Ukraine Aid. Israel Aid has pretty widespread bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, whereas there is some strong opposition, particularly from ultra conservatives in the House and a few in the Senate as well, to Ukraine Aid, so that one is certainly the more uncertain of the two sixty one billion dollars that the Biden administration requested, and Speaker Johnson has said this is something that he's going to take up, but there are members of the
House Freedom Caucus who are really pushing back against that. So we're likely going to see there try to be some kind of consensus when lawmakers return later in November or early in December to wrap Ukraine funding along with some divisive border policies and border spending that Democrats are sure to resist, leaving an ugly end of year showdown on these matters.
So Megan talk a little bit about Speaker Johnson's two tiered rolling approach to the next funding deadlines. There's one on January nineteenth for one set of programs, February second for the other. Talk about how that structure helped this bill pass, but what they're leaving for themselves to come back to in the new year.
This approach, which was called the laddered approach, which is the first time in all of my years covering Congress that I've heard that term, and I think a lot of us were trying to figure out what that was, certainly when the new Speaker proposed it. But it essentially would have a two stage government shutdown in which some
of the funds expire on January nineteenth. Interestingly, January nineteenth is right in between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, so it is a pretty divisive political time, pretty important political time, at least in terms of presidential politics.
Several agencies would be lumped in there, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, and they would shut down as they would have on November eighteenth had this interim spending plan not come together, but then the Defense Department, most notably,
would continue having funding until February. Tewod the Defense Department budget includes about half of all federal discretionary spending, so that is the biggest outlier out there, and it's typically the forcing function and the vehicle as we call it, to push other spending bills across the line. Certainly, it's something that Republicans across the board tend to support, and
most Democrats do as well. So what we could see essentially is a government shut down for more than half of federal agencies in mid January, and then the Pentagon and some others still open for just a little bit longer.
Mario, a lot of us who've been paying attention to Washington for a long time, it's pretty extraordinary to see Democrats and Republicans come together in Congress to do much of anything, let alone past federal spending plan. But obviously this has occurred because the Republicans among themselves can't seem
to agree on how to do that. Do you think we are actually seeing potentially a new era of sort of bipartisan coordination between Democrats who want to keep the government open, Republicans who want to keep the government open, and it kind of splits off the Freedom Caucus and the more hard right conservatives that are off to the side. You have enough votes to pass it. Speaker Johnson just proved that this week. Are we seeing something brand new here?
I'm not sure I would take it that far just yet. I think this would be more in the one off category. We have to keep in mind the backdrop of all of this. We're about less than a year out from the twenty twenty four presidential election. We've got to Megan's point Israel, Hamaz, Ukraine, Russia. When Matt Gay and those
members of the House out at the speaker. That was right before Hamas's attack on Israel right, which brought even more of a spotlight to this circus, if you will here in Washington among Republicans, and that fit right into the Biden White House and Democrats plans to cast Republicans
as a party unable to govern right. So it was an a on one hand, embarrassing you had the world spotlight on this drama that was unfolding in the House, and then you played into Democrat narratives that this is a party that's unable to govern if you give them the keys to do so. With all of that, there was an incentive there right to try to get this behind them, even though the Israel Palestine funding Ukraine funding
isn't in there. To Megan's point, the Ukraine part will be a lot more contentious, But you do get the sense that Republicans wanted to quickly kind of move on from this. They gave new Speaker Mike Johnson some of the goodwill up front to be able to pull some of this off right now and again just heading into the holiday season. At least for right now, it puts to some of the optics around a party in chaos.
So, Megan, since the funding questions are now kick to late January, what else are you watching for in the early part of twenty twenty four beyond the spending deadlines Israel Ukraine? What are some of the other big issues Speaker Johnson's going to have to contend with.
A possible impeachment of the United States President is certainly one thing that we will be returning to in the new year. Speaker McCarthy, during his tenure as the leader of the House started an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, you.
Know, the months that we were gone. In the weeks, House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.
There are still Republicans who are very anxious to get back to that after a fall that has been and consumed by battles, overspending, and a three week process to elect a new speaker. So I see that as percolating
early next year. It's unclear whether they will go into a full on impeachment of the president, but certainly election year politics will propel Republicans, particularly Joe Biden's most vocal foes on Capitol Hill, to try to dig further into the investigation into the president's finances, into actions taken by his son Hunter and other members of his family, and leading to a potential vote on the House floor, and if the impeachment did happen, certainly trial in the US Senate.
After the break, a look at the twenty twenty four GOP candidates and what the polls are telling us about a potential Trump Biden rematch, Mario. The twenty twenty four primaries begin about two months from now. What are the polls telling us about the shape of the Republican fight for the presidential nomination.
Well, right now, the polls are telling us that it's more of a coronation than it is a primary. And that's for ex President Donald Trump as he wages this White House comeback bid.
This election will decide whether power in America belongs to them forever or whether it belongs to you, the men and women who make this country great, who make this country run. Twenty twenty four is our final battle.
He's got a wide lead in most of the primary states over the rest of the field, and we're talking about somewhere to the tune of forty to fifty percentage points. In national polls, he also has a wide lead as well. But again to your point, Craig, I mean, we're going to see Iowa Republicans going to the polls on January fifteenth. The pressure that's on former President Donald Trump is that anything short of a resounding victory essentially amounts to a moral loss.
So as we talk to these voters in the Bloomberg News Morning consolet poll what are they telling us about their views of current President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who's trying to get back to the White House.
The poll will show for the White House just discontinued frustration. Voters ask for these kitchen table issues. Right outside of the whole Maga movement and some of the populism and some of the language around culture wars, there was this feeling of two cars in a garage, everybody has food on the table, jobs manufacturing, lower cost of living, all those things. Biden sought to do that with his legislative agenda.
And yet the frustration for the White House is the fact that, and it bears out in our poll, is that voters are looking at former President Donald Trump as a preferred choice as the one that they feel most confident about handling those issues. Craig, you may recall we had infrastructure Week every week the White House. Biden has a running joke about that on the campaign trail, and yet he was able to get that across the finish line,
and voters are giving his predecessor the credit. So for former President Trump, the salesman by nature, this is something that he's willing to capitalize on on the campaign trail.
So the presidential elections obviously a national election fifty states, but it really boils down to six or seven right there in the Heartland and Mario. The Bloomberg News Morning Console Paul focused very specifically on a handful of those states. What states did we look at and what are the voters in those states telling us about the race?
Yeah, we've got Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan are among the key swing states that we poll in the Bloomberg Morning Consult poll. And most of those states, I mean cumulatively, Trump has a six point percentage lead over President Biden. What's troubling again for Democrats is that's outside of the margin for error. And many of those states Trump has a wide lead. I'm thinking
Georgia and North Carolina for example. Michigan, he's tied there, but again, he spent a lot of resources in time visiting Michigan, including visiting the picket line when the UAW workers were on strike against the Big three.
Times Wall Street didn't the middle class built the class fact, So let's keep going.
It pretends to be at best a tough election for president Biden. At worst, it looks like he could, at least at this point, be headed for a loss. Now, what I will add is that the White House, when you speak to them, what they say is that, Hey, Obama, during this time in twenty twelve was trailing Mitt Romney. They have time to break through with their messaging. They've got a million dollar ad by that they're doing to
canvas the airwaves. They're trying to cally support of these different constituencies, and that they have time on their side.
Our poll also asked about a storied name in American politics, that of Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who recently dropped his Democratic primary bid and decided to run as an independent.
I've come here today to declare our independence from the journey of corruption, which robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future, and our respect for each other. But to do that, I must first declare my own independence, independence from the Democratic Party.
What did our poll show about how voters feel about him? Does he pull votes away from Biden from Trump equally? Mario? What did the poll find?
You hit the nail on the here, Craig. That name ID has a lot of weight, particularly in a place like Michigan, where he was upwards of about twenty percent or so. This is not great news for Republicans and former President Donald Trump. You wouldn associate him necessarily with Trump, but there's some of the stuff around COVID vaccines, etc. That the skepticism and conspiracy theories there that kind of
streamline with parts of the MAGA base. So in some ways you're seeing Trump and his campaign already start light attacks on RFK Jr. As of right now, this is shaping up to be the election of the angry voter, the election of the third party candidate, the election where voters are searching for an alternative beyond the two party system. And now you've got RFK Jr. You've got Cornell West, you've got Jill Stein all jumping into the race, and
those others, the Jill Stein's, the Cornell West. And then we still have this blooming threat from the No Labels movement, with soon to be retiring US Senator Joe Manchin possibly teasing a campaign or bid there as well, which is very troubling for the White House.
Mario, we talked a lot about Israel Gaza in relation to US, but how is that as you're playing out on the campaign trail.
Well, on the campaign trail, you're seeing staunch support for Israel. Right, that's still as much as our politics have changed and the Republican Party has changed, that hawkash Bent still leans toward resounding support for Israel, the US's strongest partner in the Middle East. There's not a whole lot of daylight in between what the Republican candidates are arguing about in
that regard. Ultimately, the support there is pretty strong. Where you see the daylight and policy of course, as Megan said earlier, is just done that Ukraine Russia support as well. Now on the Democratic side, Joe Biden has a tough heal to climb here with this as well, because he's taken a more traditional stance full throated support for Israel.
But you've seen a little bit more nuanced in some of his statements over the last couple of weeks, including some key administration officials taking Israel Prime Minister I who a bit to task on the heavy handed approach to
the retaliatory attacks and the Gaza strip. The reason being is the domestic politics are shifting quite a bit, so you're seeing Biden try to figure out a way to both keep this traditional stance in US support for Key ally, but also having faced the necessity of this happening at a point where he needs to colly support to generate momentum. Going back to those polls we mentioned, as he heads toward twenty twenty four with all parts of the Democratic base walking lockstep.
We've talked a lot about Biden, Trump, even Robert F. Kennedy, But I want to ask Megan about another senator who recently dropped out of the race. You know, there's a joke in Washington every senator looks in the mirror and s he's a president. While one who might have was named Tim Scott from South Carolina, who recently dropped out of the race. I have to say I thought he might get a little more attraction than he did. Why do you think he fell short?
Tim Scott? I think came across on the campaign trail as a bit wooden, and that has been essentially his demeanor on Capitol Hill. He's never been a senator who wants to stop and chat in the hallways. It's never been a senator who comes in with a tremendous personality, makes jokes or really has ever kind of felt at home, I think beyond the day to day happenings as a senator. And I think you saw that on the presidential campaign trail as well.
So let's talk about the other candidate and the Republican race who is getting a lot of attention right now, and that's Nikki Haley, also from South Carolina, was the governor there, of course, probably best known to most Americans as are you an ambassador under Donald Trump?
There?
I first like to say, they're five inch shields and I don't wear them unless you can run on them.
We've got two of you on school.
Second thing that I will say is I wear a heels or not for a fashion statement? There for ammunition.
She is definitely seems to have edged out Rond De Santis, the Florida governor, for the number two spot, or certainly the polls will suggest that she's it's starting to take some donors away from other candidates, including you know, some of the Tim Scott folks who are looking for a place to spend their money. Mario tell us about Nicki Haley's appeal to Republican voters and where do you think it goes from here?
Nicki Haley in some ways as an outlier. Right, she started off pretty low in the polls and has used that as a way to get her message out, which is a little bit more toward traditional Republican values. She's not dodged the issue of abortion. She's used that in a personal way or her standing as a UN ambassador. She's been able to tout some of her foreign policy bona fides and articulate that in ways that Ron DeSantis
and Tim Scott haven't. She's just been really sharp with the one liners and the heat of the moment as well, just winning those moments that we have in the debate, right, those moments against Vivet Ramaswami, those moments against Tim Scott, and those moments against Ron DeSantis, and it's caught Donor's attention, and now you're seeing them kind of lying up behind her, and wonder if after eight years, this person who may finally be able to snatch the scepter from Trump and
move on to a more familiar brand of Republicanism may be emerging.
Now.
Again, the caveat is that she's down about forty points or so, but this is one of the things that's tantalizing for donors and voters alike.
Thank you, Megan, and thank you Mario.
Thanks, thank you.
When we come back, a look at the latest on former President Donald Trump's legal battles. The flurry of court cases involving former President Donald Trump have been top of mind this week as Trump and his family testify in New York. There has also been movement in the DC election interference case and a decision on timing in the Florida case involving classified documents. Here to bring us up to speed on a Trump's legal battles is Bloomberg Legal
reporter Zoe Tilman. Zoe tell us about the origin of these Fourteenth Amendment cases that are popping up across the country. Where are these challenges taking place, what is their basis, and what do they hope to accomplish.
So the section of the Fourteenth Amendment that we're dealing
with here was adopted after the Civil War. It was part of an effort by Congress to deal with members of the Confederacy who wanted back in to politics and what to do with them, and it was mostly to initially at least bar them from holding office again because of their role in an insurrection, but after the reconstruction period really was dormant for a long time, and then after the January sixth attack on the Capitol, it began as a mostly academic exercise with legal scholars saying, hey,
this language is still here, and if we're talking about the attack as an insurrection, are people like Donald Trump who played a role in trying to overturn the election inspireing the riot, are they potentially covered by this and barred from holding office again? And that has now moved in the past few months from a mostly academic conversation to one that is landing in courtrooms across the country.
So there have been several dozen cases filed, many dismissed for really early procedural deficiencies, just not gone very far. But there are a handful that have made it past those early challenges and they're essentially saying January sixth was
an insurrection. This language can apply to someone like former President Donald Trump and the role that he played in allegedly inciting the riot, even if he wasn't there storming the Capitol, and that he shouldn't appear on ballots in either primary or general elections because he is constitutionally ineligible to hold office, just like if he was twenty years old and running for the presidency. They're saying it's the
same thing. Trump is raising a number of defenses against this, some of which are that it can't apply to a former president, it can't apply to the presidency, wasn't an insurrection. And then if we get to the merits, his lawyers are arguing that what he did is not engaging in an insurrection, that he was engaging in political speech, political advocacy, and this is not the kind of conduct that this language, assuming it is even viable, was meant to cover.
Earlier this week, a fourteenth Amendment case in Michigan was thrown out on the grounds that Michigan Secretary of State doesn't have the power to keep the former president off the ballot. But there are active cases in Minnesota and Colorado. Let's take them one at a time. Zoe, tell us what's happening in Minnesota.
The Minnesota case was not the first one filed, but leapfrogged ahead a bit in terms of status. It was because of differences in state law across the country when it comes to elections. It was filed right away in the Minnesota Supreme Court, so they took it right to the top. And what the justices did after hearing arguments was they kind of kicked the can down the road and they basically said, we're going to dismiss this because for the primary election, this is not really a substantive
election contest. This is a political exercise that state election officials basically help the major parties with where they administer a primary to help them choose a nominee who will run in the general election, and that's where constitutional eligibility
is a more salient issue. So it was a very short opinion after very lengthy briefing and arguments, and the justice is said, but if he's the nominee and this is still a live issue as we're heading into the general election, you can come back to us and maybe we'll actually engage with these really difficult, sticky, substantive questions around the fourteenth Amendment.
Zoe, tell us what's happening in the Colorado case.
This isn't a Denver District court state court where we've essentially just finished a full on trial on this issue, where the judge had rejected a lot of Trump's sort of initial procedural challenges to how this case was playing out, and heard evidence and witnesses and testimony on all of these different issues that we've just been talking about. What is an insurrection? Was January sixth and insurrection? What role did he play and was it engaging in an insurrection?
And can it even apply to the president? And the judge there is poised to rule in the coming weeks, and it is expected to be the first time since Minnesota petered out that we get some kind of substantive ruling on these issues. At that point, whoever loses can take it up to the Colorado Supreme Court, and then whoever loses there can take it to the US Supreme Court. So it could move quite quickly if they're trying to get a ruling before the Secretary of State in Colorado
is printing primary ballots. I think everyone has discussed in these hearings how there is a schedule that they have to deal with and an election, and everyone knows that someone might want to take this to the Supreme Court, So that's in the back of everyone's minds at this point.
Well, the President and his lawyers are in a variety of other courthouses around the country right now one right here in New York City, where his daughter Avanka Trump had to take the stand a few days after the former president himself took the stand. What did we learn from Avanka Trump's testimony and where does that case stand right now?
What she basically testified was that she was not involved in preparing a lot of the personal financial statements that are at the heart of this case where Donald Trump is being accused of inflating his assets to get better loan terms and that that defrauded financial institutions. But she did testify about her work securing loans for the properties, some of the properties that were at issue that in some cases were based on what his personal financial net
worth looked like. So it was, I think trying to walk a line, it seemed, between acknowledging the work that she did and is documented on behalf of the organization, but distancing herself from the core financial statements for Donald Trump personally that are really at issue in this case.
Switching down to Washington, d C. The Special Council, Jack Smith also as a variety of court filings recently that attempt to put Trump right in the center of the activities. On January sixth, up on Capitol Hill tell us where the Special Council's headed.
Well, there are a couple of big fights, but one of the biggest ones that's most imminent has to do with the gag order that the former president is under in DC, where he's barred from talking about Jack Smith, the Special Council, about witnesses and their testimony in court staff. And there's going to be a big appear Sills Court showdown over that in the next week or so. We also have Jack Smith and prosecutors pushing back on Donald Trump's many motions to get the indictment and the different
counts dismissed. The biggest issue is is he entitled to presidential immunity against this entire case. Prosecutors say absolutely not. But he's also lodging a number of other contests to different counts in the indictment and also accusing prosecutors of using inflammatory, irrelevant language to talk about January sixth in the riot itself, that the defense says is just aimed
at inflaming public opinion. And so right now there's just a flurry of papers going back and forth, both in the trial court level and also at the appeals court level. On the gag order.
We can finish up in Florida, where the president spends most of his time. It is mar A lago A state. The judge there recently talked a little bit about the calendar. Why don't you tell us how that trial is shaping up.
So that was a trial date that we had, which was May twentieth, now seems very much in jeopardy. Trump's lawyers have accused prosecutors of dragging their feet on turning over evidence. They've said that the classified evidence in that case is voluminous and complex, and that there have been access issues. The government has really pushed back on how the defense has described some of these issues and said that this is puffery and he's just trying to kick
it down the road as much as he can. So the judge said, I'm not going to deal with the trial date yet, but she reset a number of deadlines on other issues in the case that seemed to make it all but impossible to stick with that May twentieth trial. And what Donald Trump ultimately wants is to get this past November, past the general election. Whether the judge ends up doing that remains to be seen, but what she did was set a hearing for March. She said, let's
talk about the trial schedule then. But given the amount of delay that she's built in, it does seem quite unlikely that they're going to stick with May twentieth as a trial.
And this, of course is the case on the classified documents that the president allegedly had in his possession at mar A Lago. So you're covering all of these cases of the four, and we didn't talk about Fulton County, Georgia, which the one you're paying the most attention to, the one that you think post is the most legal peril to the former president.
I think that question is hard to answer. Each one rises and falls given different events. Georgia was quiet for a while, that's the state election obstruction case, and then suddenly four co defendants of the former presidents took guilty please including some of his former top campaign lawyers. And does that increase the amount of jeopardy that he faces
in Georgia issues? In the DC case, the federal election case, things were on track, and then he argues he's entitled to total immunity and that the entire case should be put on hold until that's litigated, potentially up to the Supreme Court, so we have at different times, each case presents new twists and turns. None have unfolded on sort of a regular, normal, predictable path.
Thank you so much for that, so we really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on, Thanks.
For listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. We'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Verrgalina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Sam Gebauer produced this episode. Raphael mcilely is our engineer. Our original music was composed
by Leo Sidrin. I'm Craig Gordon. We'll be taking a break next week for Thanksgiving here in the US. We'll return on November twenty seventh with new episodes. Have a great holiday.