Dana Milbank, Justin Wolfers & Tara Palmeri

US economy. Then we'll talk to Puck news is Tara Palmary about the world's most dysfunctional workplace, the United States Congress and Biden's documents storage issues. But first we have the one the only Washington Post Dana Millbank. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dana Millbank. It is an honor and a privilege. Ally, thank you. You know, I'm like a huge fan, so every time we can get you, I'm like, well, it's a it's a mutual admiration society. Oh think you.

But first we must talk about how and by the way, this is like such a good title and so absolutely true. To save himself, McCarthy just destroyed the house. I feel like it needs like a dot dot dot more than nude Gangrich. Yes, right, it's sort of a false premise baked in there that everything was fine beforehand. Right. Exactly what's so interesting about McCarthy is he really does have all of the worst qualities of the modern day MAGA GOP. Well, yeah,

I think so. But what he has in addition is this sort of absence of any sort of core belief. So I think he arguably shares that with Trump. But at least some of the MAGA crowd actually believe passionately and what they're talking about, whether it's diamond and silk, but you know, whatever, whatever their particular belief system is, whether it's white supremacy or uh, you know, drowning government in the bathtub, there's a belief in something McCarthy doesn't

really have. That he has a belief in his ability to hold on to power to advance himself, and which really troubles me about what he did there is not just that. Okay, so he's got a motion of a kid he can get kicked out with, you know, if any one member disapproves of of him. Basically, it's not that he's going to bring all these cockamami things to a vote. He has agreed to changes, particularly one with his superpack that is going to guarantee that even more

crazy's get elected in each future election cycle. So he's dooming not just this Congress, he's doing future ones. So as part of this deal, the Club for Growth, which is basically an insurgent group that was fighting McCarthy, struck a deal with McCarthy's Conservative Leadership Fund, which is a superpack that's effectively under McCarthy's control, and they agreed they would no longer get involved in nomination fights in safe

Republican districts. Now, of course, of stricks are safe, So they've agreed not to participate in those, which basically means they cannot stop the craziest candidate from prevailing, because that's inevitably what's going to happen if some grown ups, if there are any remaining in the party, don't get involved. So they're basically saying, Club for Growth have at it. You can get the craziest candidate available, get them through

the primary, and we're not going to stop here. Yeah, hard to imagine that you could have people crazier than Marjorie Taylor Green than George Santo's, but that's what we're looking at. Right right, And I think you know, we're what we're starting to find out now is each cycle it gets a little bit nuttier. So I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green is being called a sellout now, She's been called a prostitute by one of the January six insurrection leaders. So even she is now seen as a tool of

the establishment. She was fighting against the twenty holdouts there. So of course this is what's going to happen, because what's been happening ancle after cycle and Republican primaries is the way to win in these very low turnout affairs is to be the most out there, to be the craziest, and so the ceiling of crazy in two becomes the floor of crazy. And it's interesting, we still don't know, and I think this is a really important data point.

And Nancy Mace said this on a Sunday show this week, which is, we still don't know what McCarthy has been promising people, including Marjorie Telegreen. That's right. She came out of Tuesday's caucus meeting and when they were supposedly presented with this saying the same thing that she still don't know what back room deals were made, what what handshake deals were made, what gentlemen agreements, although there was nothing particularly gentleman about what was going on there on the floor.

And you know, there was supposedly the secret free Page addendum, which McCarthy and others claims does not exist. Other Republican members say they've actually read this thing that doesn't exist, pieces of parling out. Okay, they're going to have a vote to abolish the I R S, eliminate the income tax, eliminate corporate taxes. So you know, we're seeing a little bit of it. We'll learn a bit more with you know,

who's assigned to the committees. But to paraphrase a famous speaker of the House, we won't know what's in it until we see it. So you know, who knows what surprises lay in stock for us coming ahead. But it is worth reflecting on the fact that McCarthy is I'm not sure that I haven't said this today an abject more on. Well, he sounds like one, to be sure, just watching his his latest news conference. But I mean, there was a piece in Politico about why journalists feel

they can't just say he's more on. I mean, there's a lot of like it's unusual for politician to I mean, except for Louis gomer who is now out of Congress, to be so sort of known as not smart. Right. We'll remember when Pelosi called him a moron because of his objection to the COVID requirements, and then he made up t shirts that said more on. Of course, was one of the most brilliant cell homes of all time. It's just you might as well, you might as well

wear it on your sleeve, so to speak. But you know, I think part of it is he he doesn't seem to be able to string a sentence together. And is it a speech impediment or difficulty? You know, I've been writing about this for years. His age will not say that it is so. You know, obviously wouldn't be poking fun at him if if it were such a thing. But no, they're not. They're not saying that it is so. I think that may make him look dumber than he actually is. I mean, you don't get to where he

is in life without some smarts. I think it's savvy, right, everybody likes some you know, great backslapper. You know, he's so he's really good, you know, in the back room, and you know, he's very good at knowing everybody's family and relatives and what everybody's doing. So there's a certain you know, genius in that. Certainly he's no Polo c genius. He doesn't seem to be much of a strategist or

even a tactician. And you know, now he's in over his head because you've got you can sort of see the various train wrecks lined up here with the debt ceiling, with the government shutdown, and with everything else, and he must pass legislation. They couldn't even get some you know, nominal things, you know, affirming the value of law enforcement officers. Couldn't get that through the House this week. Yeah, no, I mean the barely. You know, he was not able

to whip the votes from himself fourteen times. So it does seem possible that his inability to whip votes is going to bite him. Yeah, and in fairness, I don't think anybody else could do it either, because you know, you've got a four vote you already made, you know, three votes if Santos is forced out, can we talk about this Santos showdown? Because this is kind of incredible. We have the New York State Party saying that he should resign, and McCarthy saying he should stay well for

two different reasons. The New York State Party recognizes that he's an embarrassment and they don't want him there, and McCarthy recognizes that he's my fourth vote and might only have a three vote majority because in all likelihood they lose the seat. So, you know, McCarthy, as we talked about earlier, has one, you know, north star one guiding principle, and that is to make sure that Kevin McCarthy clings to power. You know, you can see why. It's not

in the best interest of the party. It's not the best interests of Congress, you know, let alone the country, but it is in the short term interest of Kevin McCarthy. He's won the speakership is beholden to everyone in the world. Where does he go from here? We've seen this week where he goes. I've argued that, you know, they're governing

to a large extent based on fantasy. First of all, we had the what Democrats are calling the Tinfoil Hat Committee, you know that basically the Deep State Committee being created. But we also had okay, so the first legislation was to repeal eight seven thousand I R S agents. Well, first of all, they didn't repeal anything because it's not going to go through the Senate. Second, there aren't eighty seven thousand I R S legients there there were, there

are never going to be. So they're basically working against a fiction. Same thing on this born Again legislation. You know, Steve Schleeze gets up and said, we're going to stop them from killing infants. Yes, what you already can't kill infants in the United States of America the best. Yeah, so you know, just you know, sort of another straw man. So it's like they're not just campaigning on falsehood, it's now actually governing on falsehood. So we're they're passing legislation

to address falsehoods. Yeah, they're legislating laws now exactly. It's no longer a campaign speech or you know. And you know, we had Brian Zinky up there saying on the floor a couple of days ago saying, you know that the deep State was coming for me. The deep State didn't get me. The deep State is trying to destroy the American cowboy, and that's why we need this Waganization Committee.

So you know, it's not in a you know, Q and on on four chan or whatever it's now you know that the House Republican majorities of official policy is to probe the Deep States destruction of the American cowboy. I have a question about that crazy Ryan Zinky speech, which is he's sixty one years old. Like, imagine being sixty one year old former Secretary of the Interior, one of the few people from the Trump administration who actually

was was sort of pushed to resign. Imagine, first of all, how bad you have to be for that to happen, right, I mean, you know, Jared Kushner stays in the White House the whole time, but you were forced to resign on ethics. Right. That guy barely gets a congressional seat right in a very red state, and he is now decided that the only way, you know, he's going to go for Marjorie Taylor Green because truth is, there's no way he believes any of that. Well, I've given up

saying whether they believe it or not. I think you acually teach yourself to believe it by saying it every so often. But it's exactly what we were talking about earlier. You know, a few years back, Tom Massey was talking about Republican primaries and he said, I used to think the voters we're going for the libertarian in the race, and then it occurred to me that, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but they're actually going for the craziest son of a bitch in the room. And that's you know, so Zinki

gets that. You know, the way he gets the job and keeps the job is to be even more of the craziest cowboy. And you know he is, in fact bringing his cowboy heat up onto the house floor. So he is there any incentive here to behave well? I mean, there was a quote this morning from Chris Murphy who said that now that these Republicans have created all this chaos, they have this incentive to behave better because they don't want to look like idiots anymore. I have not seen

any evidence to support this. I'd like to believe that. I hope the Senator Murphy is correct about that. It seems very charitable, you know, and that's certainly what we need if we're going to avoid a debt default and other things. And look, there are people like that, I'm sure Brian Fitzpatrick and the Republican Leadership Coalition or whatever they call themselves, are thinking that way. But you know, are they actually going to join in a discharge petition,

enjoining with Democrats to fight the crazy. I'll believe it when I see it. But I think for the you know, the large majority of them, you know, all the incentives are on the other side. It's when you appear that you're gaving to the establishment, that you're going to get a primary challenge and you're gonna get booted out of office.

But it is so weird. I just want to get back to this for a second, that you have these candidates, Like so McCarthy didn't want to lose these twenty maga Republicans, but if he had said, I think there are more than money, very blue dogg ish Democrats who come from you know, very swingy districts. I mean, like, if you were to scientifically look at the two mid terms, you would say, voters don't like Trump is um, they want just government to work. They like bipartisan kind of stuff.

You know, we may not ideologically align with that, but that is what voters said in this to mid term. But McCarthy just doesn't have any appetite for that because of these primary challenges. I think he would be out of the speakership before week's end if he were to go in that direction. They didn't spend a moment talking about the possibility of negotiating with Hikim Jefferies to get a certain number of votes. I mean, that option is always available to him, but that will create the motion

to vacate the chair. So he's completely in handcuffs, particularly now. But in terms of his ability to actually negotiate with Democrats, so to the extent there are going to be bipartisan achievements, it's going to be done by isolating Kevin McCarthy at this point. McCarthy failing right. Yeah, he can't. He can't afford to do it. It would cost him his job if he if he were to be seen in the same room with Kim Jefferis it's so insane because it is.

I mean, again, maybe they'll get back into power the way they did in two sixteen with just a fluke, but if they were really smart, and obviously, luckily for all of us, they're not. But I mean, you would like you watched him Jordan on television, and he looks he does not look like at least to me, And maybe I'm wish casting in my mind, but he does not look like a political future I would want from my country. Well, he looks like a very angry man.

So he's a perfect embodiment of and representative of the frightened, angry white men who believe they're losing their place and the emerging multi racial America. So, Molly, this is the this is the question of Trumpism, and that is you know that the whole operating philosophy there was, if you can motivate enough of the frightened white, non college educated men in this country to vote in extraordinary numbers, you can still win an election with that. At this stage,

you can't. You're obviously not going to be able to do that, you know, in a decade, two decades from now, But you can for a limited period of time. So that's the premise. But you know, in the long term, we're all dead. So it may be abhorrent, but it's not irrational. Yeah, this is such wild stuff. I hope you will come back. I'm happy to any time. Justin Wolfers is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and a New York Times contributor. Welcome to fast politics,

Justin Wolfers, Hey, I'm here for fast economics, not politics. Perience, start with are we all going to die? Some so comfortable talking about economics? It seems like this is you're a happy place. What the fund is going on? Justin? I have good news. Okay, let's world's getting back to normal. Oh I love that. Explain. The thing that people have been freaking out about over the past year has been inflation.

And they've had good reason too. So for as long as you have been a journalist or a wank, for as long as most of us have been alive, inflation has been boring. Inflation was two percent almost every year. Sometimes would be one point something, sometimes to be two point something. It was boring. We never talked about it. Pandemic hit, the world went crazy. Putin invade Ukraine, an

inflation went blue. Technical term that one. Yeah, it's very very The nuance language there rose to seven eight nine, depending on which measure you look at. Prices at the pumper through the roof the grocery store was an unhappy place. Buying a new car was so expensive. People would buy used cars, but even they got so expensive. Cost of living was a really important issue. Throughout all of this, people have been asking economists like me, what's going to happen,

and we reminded them, this too shall pass. And all of the ructions and madness of the pandemic were affecting the economy in so many different ways, and I kept saying, this will pass, and people kept saying, you're crazy. The world's going nuts. But we're seeing that it's starting to pass. And so what we actually saw is economist called the headline inflation number that's an actual measure of the cost of living actually fell last month. I don't want your

listeners to be confused. I didn't say inflation fell. I said the average price the cost of living actually fell. It was cheaper to be alive in December than it was in November. That seems good. I'm in favor of it, and so are your listeners. So now, a big part of that is gas prices have been coming down. In gas prices is a big part of all of our badgert. So what economists tend to do is we don't spend a lot of time looking at gas prices because gas

prices tell us a lot about Vladimir Putin's mood. They tell us a lot about geo political eructions in the Middle East, and they're driven by all sorts of things that really don't affect much of the rest of the economy. So we tend to look at something called core inflation, which strips out energy prices because they're driven by so much other madness, and it also strips out food. Now it's not that food is unimportant, but food prices go up and down with things like drought. Cardi b is

upset about the price of lettuce right now. That reflects lettuce diseases in California, and that's not really telling us anything about the underlying state of the economy. So we look instead of core inflation, and core inflation rose, but core inflation is now falling again. Wait, is that good or bad? Well, it's good. So we tend to look at core inflation rather than headline inflation because it tells us more about where the economy is going. And it's falling.

It's still high, but it's falling, and that's all the really good news I've got for you. So we want all of these numbers to go down because these are the numbers that make right now, the seven days right, those are the numbers that everyone's anxious about. Are these inflationary numbers exactly? And so they're coming down, that's good news. They're not yet at levels that I think any of

us would find calming. So calm boring, which is every economist highest aspiration is for the economy to be boring. Boring is what inflation is about? Two or maybe two points something core inflation. I think it's down to six and a half percent, so still quite some distance from boring. But when we talk about the inflation rate, we're usually talking about how different as prices today than twelve months ago. Well, that tells us a lot about what was happening in

the first half of two. We really care about what's been happening recently and so over the past three months. Now here's the exciting news. Money. I want you on the edgier seat, and maybe can you cheer when this happens? Really? Yes? Yes, absolutely, let's go. Okay, because I'm gonna walk out with the number you want to hear? Wait, you weren't walking out before? That was my friendly every day I just mentioned, right,

that was the dumb down version. Okay, good, I'm going to try to pay attention and not get distracted by something all right, go on or anything. Core Inflation, that's the one that tells us about what's going to happen in the future. Over the past three months, has run an annual rate of three point one pc. You forgot to cheer, Molly. Yeah, wait, but you're just telling me what it's running. Now, You've got to tell me the good there's no good news yet. I'm waiting for the

good news. That is good news. To remember, boring is two percent. Oh so, okay, so it isn't going up. We're awfully close to boring. Oh so that's good, which means you might never need to I was going to be you know, the thing has Molly, I like to talk about other things. So you and I next time we can talk about other things that unemployment, in a

quality the environs. Those are good things. We probably are going to have to keep having this conversation for another three to six months, right, But it looks like we're on our pathway to boring. Oh so you really think inflation is on its way down? There's no question. So it was controversial three months ago when I said inflation has peaked no longer controversial. So are you like taking

a victory lap here? Do you? Are you sticking it to the people who are like kind of the more part maybe the more republican partisan type economists who were poopooing you, not Molly, that is not my personality type. But if you, for instance, wanted to add a couple of paragraphs right now, I think your listeners would love to hear them. So Jesse texted me a question, and it's very unusual that Jesse texts me a question. Don't move on from I was right, everyone else was wrong.

Jesse says, why is everyone talking about inflation NonStop if it's gone down? And it is true. I was watching the news today and someone was talking about an eight dollar head of califlower. Yeah, So that's the thing. What I'm trying to do is give you and your listeners a sense of how we know inflation is going to play out over the next few months. So I'm not looking back, what I'm looking forward. Okay, it's still high

and it's still going to hurt for now. Right, So inflation is run at six and a half percent out of the past year. That's bad news. If I if I were in the business of political talking points. I would scream about that, I would talk about not all of inflation. I would talk about egg prices or let us prices and so on. But what we know is if you look at the most recent few months, which is really telling us where the economy is going, it's

much much lower. And so the moment of crisis is not past us, but we can see it coming just around the corner. So again, does this mean that we are coming in for a soft landing and that a recession is not necessarily imminent? Right? So economists are smart enough never to risk their entire reputations on any one thing. But if you thought about what a soft landing looks like, it would be this. Now, there are a million things

that can happen between here and there. I don't want to promise your listeners there's no recession coming, but I do want to say that the folks who say they're certain that there's one coming. And I saw a survey the other day in which which professional forecaster said there was a sixty five percent of a recession next year. Some were so certain they said there were sure of it. I think those people are overstating the case. So of course you should always prepare for the worst and hope

for something better. But I'm not as worried as a lot of people are. And this is part of the good news story, which is it's now less likely that the Fed will be tempted to cause a recession to stomp out inflation, right, because they don't need to keep raising interest rates if inflation is going down on it's own, right.

And if what I'm saying sounds different than what you're reading in the newspaper, it's because what I'm trying to give you a sense of is what the newspaper is going to say in two or three months time rather than today. But here's my question for you. So these layoffs we saw Goldman laid off today, we're seeing the

text will they be okay? The heartbreaks? But so these layoffs are largely trying to sort of get ahead of you know, with a sort of eye towards shareholders and like, you know, using it as an excuse or these layoffs, I mean, what are they? Why are they happening right now? One way to try and track what's going on with the economy is reading individual news stories about individual companies. It doesn't work, and it doesn't work because in any

given month, three million Americans lose their jobs. How many loss their jobs at Goldman like ten tho maybe, yeah, it's maybe twelve thousand. But it's a point something's maybe it's a point ooh something something percent that's sat Listen there. I'm sure there are people who loves their jobs, who are maintenance staff, and people for whom this is like, you know, that's not all going to be like wildly

overpaid investment bankers. If you think Goldman directly hires its maintenance staff rather than outsourcing so that someone else can crush their workers, I think you may not understand the financial industry. All right, Well, that's a good point, But the point is, you know, it's never good when people

lose their jobs. But I think there's a really good point here that you think this is more about the company is unless about And certainly the tech sector has been very overheated with valuations way out of the mainstream. And again, the normal state of the world for the U. S. Economy and for people's lives is jobs are always getting destroyed,

they're always getting created. The ones that happen to be destroyed right now are the ones that have journalists who are on that specific beat, so we're reading more about them. So what we don't hear about so much about is you know, your local travel agent finally closes because who uses travel agents? No one writes that article, but it's probably far more important than Goldman sacks layoffs. So there are two ways of tracking the economy. One is read

newspaper headlines from the Journal and the Times. The other is run large scale surveys about the entire span of the US economy, which includes small, medium, and large companies, and use sophisticated statistical techniques to make sure they're representatives. I'll give you a hint the second one works. The first approach doesn't that makes sense. I'm curious, Now where do you think now this economy is headed? You think

that inflation and does this mean? Here's another question I want to ask a lot of people have said, especially Republicans, have said that the Biden administration was absolutely wrong when earlier on when inflation started, there were talk talk that it was transitory. But if this is actually happening, wouldn't this actually be sort of transitory? I mean, when this have been caused by supply chain hiccups? And you know the gas prices. I mean, obviously it's caused by the war.

Was the war was Russia? But like I mean, isn't that ultimately kind of supply and demand stuff? Oh my god, Molly, I love you so much. Yes. So look there's a big lesson here. So the debate a year and a half ago was there, will the rise in inflation be transitory? The big mistake was that the word transitory means something different in Washington than one economists use it. In Washington, transitory means two to three weeks. In economics, it means

two to three years. And so what happened after two to three months was the economists finally learned they had to stop using that word, and they walked away from it. Look, the truth is, it's looking a lot like the script that the team transitory economists would describing a year and a half ago, although with one big asterix, which is, I think we've learned that transitory might take twice as

long as we had originally hoped it would. So things are a little worse than what the optimists have been suggesting they would be, but they are still eventually following the script that things are on their way back to normal. Yeah, it sounds like such an interesting and strange time. The Fed raised interest rates half a point in the last raise. Do you think now they're just going to back off completely?

Not completely. So, first of all, the FED plays a really important role in all of this, which is that if they can convince the rest of us that they're going to do whatever they can to reduce inflation, then we'll believe them. And now if I am a business trying to set my prices for next year, and I'll think, well, my input costs aren't going to rise by much because no one's going to raise their prices because everyone believes

the Fed. And so the FED has to like a parent threatening if you don't behave yourself, will take away your toys. That's sort of the role of the FED, and what it hopes to do is if you're really good parent you kids, then behave themselves and your nevative take away the toys. Well, in this analogy, take away the toys is cause a recession. So the FED sort of saying I'm willing to cause a recession if you

don't behave yourself and stock raising prices. If everyone believes them, they stop raising prices and then they don't need to cause a recession. And that's my hope that that's the pathway that we're on. Yeah, that's really interesting. You think that there's a real chance that there is in a recession now? Absolutely, Yeah, so interesting. Justin I am really

grateful to have you on. Just one last thing. Can you remind our listeners that the stock market is not the economy, So the stock market is not the economy. Can you explain this sort of market volatility and why it's not so relevant even though it is relevant. Yeah, let me actually start by giving your listeners some advice,

which is totally serious. I know that market Place on NPR begins every day by telling you what the numbers are, and I know that it's on Yahoo, and I know it's on Google Finance, and I know it's in the newspaper. But you actually don't need to check financial prices more than about once a year. Basically make sure you haven't lost all your retirement savings and move on with it. So the stock market is not the economy for a

bunch of reasons. First of all, the stock market tells you about what's happening to a bunch of large companies and expectations about what's going to happen to a large number of companies. The stock market is really important because knowing what people's expectations are is really important. So that's the sense in which I watch it, but I'm paid to. You don't have to. I'll be here to translate it for you. Secondly, realize large companies ain't the whole economy.

First of all, there's small companies. And then, second of all, realize that if you think about our total economic pie that gets divided between workers and busses, the stock markets all about bosses. So the stock market goes down and whenever workers get a bigger slice of the pie. So sometimes a decline in the stock market may actually be good news for those of us who work for a living. And then also sometimes the stock markets expectations just playing wrong.

They get too excited by one story or another. I wouldn't spend too much time trying to interpret these financial prices, although I do think they're useful as it. Just think of it as an indicator of optimism or pessimism. And this is where you Also, I'm always struck when I go to the web and I look up the stock market. The first thing it does is it shows me chart showing me how it's done over the past thirty days.

Over thirty days, nothing changes. What you should do is pan back out and look at it over the last ten years, and that tells your whole different story. Yeah, there's the day to day ups and downs, and that gets the financial press very excited. But for instance, one of the most striking facts is the value of stocks is higher right now than it was on the eve of the pandemic. That's kind of mind blowing. Your investments actually have risen in value despite a once in a

century global pandemic. By that measure, we're kind of pretty healthy. That's not a bad place to be, all right. I'm happy to hear it. I'll trust you. Thank you, justin Wolfers. I hope they'll come back. I look forward to it. I know you, our dear listeners are very busy, and you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of pieces of punitentry each week. This is why every week I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles

on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love having this in your inbox every Friday, So sign up at fast politics pod dot com and click the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast Politics pod dot com. Terra Paul Mary is a senior political correspondent at Puck News. Welcome to Fast Politics Terrible Mary, Thanks for having me, Molly, seems like things are going great in Congress. Talk to me about what the political landscape looks like right now

and Washington, d you see what are you seeing? I mean, I think there's like a bit of um just sort of dysfunction. Everyone's hanging out like there's no more proxy voting anymore. So explain that that. It seems really like an important data point. Right, So the margins are really slim in Congress. McCarthy only has five votes for a majority. And if Democrats leave Congress just like say, they're not able to vote. You know, a lot of them are older,

some of them have health issues. Just general things happen. People are coming from all over the country, things like you know, the flights being down that stop members from getting to Congress to vote. That can really change the

game for Kevin McCarthy. So if if Democrats don't cho up to vote, for every two Democrats that don't chow up to vote, one less Republican is needed to pass um legislation, So there's an incentive for Democrats to show up because they don't want Republicans to be off the hook when there's only five, you know votes that they lose, you know, five votes they can't pass what they want to pass, and a lot of his messaging. But you know,

there's it feels like the first week of school. Like I've been Washington right now, and last week was kind of a disaster with McCarthy. You know, well, we all know what happened, but but I but I was told democracy was messy and that we that we in the pundit class were we're overreacting, and that Kevin McCarthy had it all handled. Are you saying he didn't have it all handled? You know, that was like some amazing spin. By day three, they were like, well, you know what,

let's chocolate up to the process. It's like, no one loves it, hasn't happened since the Civil War, but yes, it's the process. Yeah. I mean, the reality is that he barely won the House, and a big part of the reason why he won is because moderates in New York were elected and moderates in California. So at the end of the day, also the House Freedom Caucus grew and they decided to flex that power and he's pretty much, you know, powerless, and it was just a wild week.

But this is just going to be his hell, he can't lose votes. I mean five votes, that's all he's got. And George Santos probably won't be sticking around for very long if they have a special election, and that that's probably that will probably only be if he's indicted, but

that might take a little while. But you're already hearing Republicans in Long Island say the guy needs to step down, but McCarthy said, no, he doesn't want him to step down, of course, not because he needs that vote again, five people.

It's just like, that's it, he needs George Santo's crazy to think that, right, But then there are others like people are a big part of the reason why they held off on voting for committee chairs that were in contention was because McCarthy didn't want to alienate others who might possibly wanna retire if they don't get their chairmanships. Verne Buchanan um wait to explain, explain, explain. Vernon Buchanan

is seventy one years old. He was running for chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, he a ranking member, and he didn't get it. Instead, Jason Smith won that. And Jason's kind of been seen as someone who kisses up to Kevin McCarthy. He's an ally of his. And I was told that Burne was angry, very angry to express his displeasure to Kevin McCarthy. And here's the thing,

He's worth more than a hundred million dollars. He's seventy one years old, and everyone's like, why is this guy from southwest Florida, like Sarasota area going to stick around in Congress rich and with no you know, without having the chairmanship of that Ways and Means Committee. So there was a lot of like talk this week when he lost, like over in Buchanan's going to retire. That means another seat for McCarthy would be down for about two months

during like a special election. That's in the best case scenario, that's if Rhonda Santis calls one immediately. So it was more concerned and we're kind of assuming that George Santos

will eventually have to step down. So that's three votes um. So, as you can tell every day everyone's sort of there's like a part looking you know what what happens if Republicans lose a vote, right, and you know what will trigger the motion of ak You know, will it be Trump having a bad day and saying, why isn't McCarthy endorsing me for president more forcefully? Will it be Matt Gates's board and size he just wants to, you know, not getting enough press, wants to trigger the motion to vacate?

Or will it be something like the dead ceiling? And in the meantime, everyone's just counting the votes and Democrats have to show up for this to make it difficult for McCarthy because if it's two Democrats don't show up, instead of five vote extra votes of majority, he needs four, So there's an incentive for them to show up and to make it more difficult for him. Why did they get rid of proxy voting? Is just just like because they don't want to have anything that looks like a

COVID restriction. I'm sure it's a little bit of like backlash against the COVID changes, and I think I mean Republicans will say, like constitutionally, you have to be there, right, but nobody believes that. I mean, they don't even believe that, right. And Marjorie Taylor Green was in Costa Rica during the omnibus vote and she voted via proxy on that, so

like everybody was abusing it. It wasn't just Republicans, but I was talking to a freshman member who was like, oh my god, everybody has COVID now, and they're like, not everybody, but people are voting with COVID A D or r D. Yeah, people are because like our zone tests, so you don't know, don't test, don't tell you know, don't test, don't tell Jesus. And I mean Democrats are showing up with masks, like telling people they have COVID voting and then like sitting off the side of the

floor or like coughing. It's like a waiting room. And Republicans are not wearing masks because they're not allowed to. Who care, They don't want to lose their primary challenges apparently, like the crush where the kids that like, you know children, crush is it's crash right, not crush crash? Yeah, please ask the area, do you if it's a crash or a crash it's a crash. I don't have to cash. I've just revealed the fact that I have children. Nobody

keeps their kid in a crush that's for the baby. Jesus. No, I thought that's like a French term for like a playgroup for kids. Maybe I maybe the ignorama here, but anyway, continue Apparently the Capitol Hill play group or babysitter is very segregated based on which parents make their kids wear masks and which don't, and which parents show with masks

on which don't. So it's kind of hilarious, like some of the kids, like the kids have to wear masks, but it's kind of a it's interesting when they when they pick their kids up. So it's not just on the house floor, it's also in the playroom for children. That's amazing. That is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, So basically, I guess the thing is there's an incentive to show up and vote to make it difficult for Kevin McCarthy and obviously for Republicans to make it easier for Kevin McCarthy.

But you know, people are sick now because there's COVID, but this was something that Republicans want to get rid of. Proxy voting they're all kind of groaning about it at the same time privately. And now the House floor is a super spreader event. Wow, because you have to think four hundreds something people like there has to be covid rationally. Uh,

that is completely crazy. So explain to me as we are in this sort of post liberal congress, whatever this is, it's just been Ghazis all the way down or there are other plans here. Well, I think that this document drama with Biden having classified documents as well and like various locations, has become like a gift to the GOP. Yeah, it seems like, yeah, they're going to tear this apart.

And I guess it's like, you know, a lot of Democrats have spoken to have been like, oh god, they should have known this, Like they should have been aware that this would may have also been an issue that Biden would happen as well, because apparently, like the document investigation, they're very close to getting Trump on that. But I think this sort of changes everything, right, And I mean,

I don't know Council investigate, you know, Biden. All I know is that Republicans are going to have a field day with this, and it seems to be getting worse. Now there's a second location where there were documents. So again, like I've seen the comparisons on CNN and The New York Times about you know how this is nothing compared

to what Trump did. The problem is, it's not about what happened, it's about how the Republicans can use it, right, I mean a thousand percent a locked closet at the pen Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania is not the same as tons and tons of documents in the man Lago basement that that Trump wouldn't give up. He kept saying he wouldn't give up. But it doesn't matter if it can be on Fox News, right, Oh, yeah,

of course. And not even that. I mean, like the whole idea of classified A big part of it was the idea that like classified documents can't leave the White House, right, But like, actually it shows that it's kind of common for it to happen, right right, right, right, yeah, And it undermines the investigation on some level. It totally does. And apparently we're really close on Trump and it just doesn't seem like that's a viable route. Then you have

to go out after the president as well. You know, then there's questions of like, do you have a I don't know, like a special prosecutor. Again, I expect you're going to hear about it like it's Benghazi and then Hunter Biden. Obviously that's going to be another one. But that's what you do. I mean, like there's they can't really pass anything because they won't pass in the Senate, right, it's messaging and investigations and investigate the FBI and defund the I r S and just like it's a lot

of messaging points. But I do think, like I stand by the fact that the reason that Kevin McCarthy has a majority right now is because of Republicans in New York. And everyone says thank you Andrew Cuomo for that they're districting, thank you Andrew Cuomo, and also thank you j Jacobs who shows no interest in resigning, right and then also

Republicans in California. So these coastal Republicans, you know, are the reason they have a majority, and they're kind of the red herrings, and you know, I don't I would think that the White House would be making serious outreach to these people right now, right and trying to build relationships with them. So they can pass, you know, stats a budget at that ceiling, right, because those people are going to lose their seats otherwise, right. And the exercises

from last week are not really that great. Although I did hear when Matt Gates voted for Donald Trump for speaker that a lot of the offices got calls, including in some of those districts, saying please elect our dear leader Donald Trump for speaker. So that was a So let's just get back into this or a second. It does sound like you think, and I think a lot of people think this that that Donald Trump really does think he's coming back a speaker or president as president. Yeah,

of course I do think so. I don't think this is just an exercise. I think he really is running. The quality of the campaign is to be decided. It seems very low energy, and I mean, I guess they're going to South Carolina to have an event, but it's like an intimate event. It's not a rally, just very weird, like that's what he was good at, it was the rally, right, Yeah, I mean the idea of him choosing to have an

intimate event seems odd to me totally. And it's just like you know, they're trying to show even even his his launch, like the way that he came out and said he was running in this What did he say, want an elegant event at mar Lago? Again? Low energy, Like that's not what he's about. I mean, if there's anything to say about Trump, like he had these massive rallies, got tons of people and they were entertaining. Maybe there's fear that they can't fill stadiums anymore. Do you think

that's right? It's possible. There's also like it costs a lot of money to throw rallies, and he doesn't really have a lot of money right now. He's tapped his high donor network, right and he's tapped probably his low donor network as well, so there's probably questions about that. And I don't know. I think the choice to go to South Carolina is interesting, like he's bypassing New Hand, sure, which obviously was a big win for him, But I mean, I have to think it's either just expensive or they

don't know if they can get the crowd. Why else. I mean, it's a long race, and he renounced so early like they were going to be burning through money

before anyone even announces that they're challenging him. It was really a mistake, yes, but he sort of forced himself into that by saying that he was going to make an announcement before the mid terms and when the mid terms were really bad, showing he couldn't back out because then it would make him look like he had been defeated and that he was backing out because the mid terms were a poor reflection on him. It was, you know,

he boxed himself in. Everyone close to him thought it was a terrible idea for him to run, and they knew this narrative was going to play out. So do you think he keeps going now? Yeah, I know everybody seems to think that Trump's not running. It's really funny, like you're in DC and everyone's like, is he really running, and it's like, yes, he's running. Well, how does everyone think he's not running? I mean, I guess no one else is running because he don't hear anything about him. Yeah.

I mean I also wonder to the fact that he's not on Twitter anymore. He clearly doesn't have any sway over the Republican Party the way he used to, or at least, yeah, the base. I mean, if there's anything to be taken away from that McCarthy voter rama, whatever you want to call it. Trump does not have the same sort of sway over the MAGA base. I mean, he couldn't get them to vote for McCarthy. Yeah, that was my sense, was that, And even like when Lauren

Boubert's like my favorite president. Yeah, they're not scared of him anymore. Yeah, but he wouldn't put them on a hit list anyway, because they're like popular in their own right with his base. Yeah, except that like they used to be. I mean, I'm not saying that he would or he wouldn't put them on a hit list, but they they used to be terrified of crossing him, Oh for sure. Right, I think they're more maga than he is now at this point, he's just not as relevant anymore.

But I guess he is for primary voters. Okay, I take that back. He's very relevant for like a certain sect of primary voters. I don't know. I just felt like lost his juice. Maybe he didn't give it enough either, Like maybe he just he wasn't willing to call them out, single them out by name the way he did against people who impeached him. Right, right, I think he knows that his own base is skeptical of Kevin McCarthy. He probably shouldn't have endorsed Kevin McCarthy. Frankly, right, That's what

I wonder too. I mean, that might be another one where he's like he made a quick, gut political decision and didn't realize that, hey, this might backfire. Do you think that if Trump had endorsed like a Matt Gate or tried to run for it himself, that he would have won. I don't think he would have won himself, and I don't think Matt Gates would have won, But I think he could have picked anyone probably like mainstream, that wasn't McCarthy, and they could have won. Maybe, like

maybe if he endorsed Jim Jordan's. Maybe now, I don't know, because the moderates probably wouldn't wanted to vote for Jim Jordan's. It would have been a test of his real power if he endorsed Jim Jordan's. I think if he was like, let's all get behind Steve Schalee, he tweeted that that would have been done, deal right, right, But Steve Schools was probably gonna win anymore. Yeah, Matt Gates I don't

think that. I don't think a Trump tweet saying let's let's vote for Matt Gates would have done anything right. But I wonder if a Trump tweet or truth excuse me, yes, the truth, that's right. Got to call it a truth. Can't call it a tweet? Yeah, God forbid, we call it a tweet. I don't know. Could if Trump put on an honest to goodness campaign for Jim Jordan's, would

he have one? I don't know. I just don't. I also just know that like every time Trump called one of these people like Matt Gates or Lauren Bober or Andy BIG's, they'd be like, we want you for speaker, and then he would stop. You know what I mean? Right, He's like the second he's flattered, he's done. Right. He just didn't have it in him to turn his followers

into enemies for Kevin McCarthy. Yeah, it makes sense, makes sense, But this is just another miscalculation, another political miscalculation for Trump. Terra Paul, Mary is so interesting. Thank you for coming on, you have to come back, Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be on. Congrats on all your success. Thank you friend. Molly Jung Fast Jesse Cannon, Marrek fucking Garland. I just said that like he was gonna come on and do this with us, But really it's just my

exasperation with this fucking guy. Democrats want to make sure that Fox News is able to put together all the false equivalences they can, so they are giving them all the fuel they can and married Garland. I mean, think about the you know, Mary Garland, who dragged his feet on the Chinese bank account that Donald Trump had, is now quickly jumping to investigate President Biden. So we are it looks like some we're gonna we're looking down two years of a sort of Benghazi meets white Water. They're

going to clinton them up. That's a good way to put it. You can't help but notice how fast though the Biden administration acted on this compared to that slow walk a Mark Garland took to appoint a special counsel for Mr. Trump. That's my how to take two. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep

the conversation going. And again thanks for listening.