Jacob Rubashkin, Ruth Marcus & Roger Parloff

we talked to Washington Post Associate editor Ruth Marcus. Welcome to Fast Politics, Ruth Marcus, thanks for having me. I'm Verry thrilled to have you. First, we're going to talk about this piece you wrote about the Supreme Court and Justice John Roberts, because we are in another Supreme Court season. Uh. And also it turns out I feel like these mid terms, John Roberts must have been sitting there going like, oh,

I was right. If only they had listened to me, right, I mean, explained to me what his sort of ethosys and his thinking was and how it ended up affecting everything. Well, that's a big question. But basically John Roberts tried to get the five other conservative justices to slow things down. He didn't say joan over rule Row or Row was

correctly decided. He said, let's just not do it right now, guys, and let's find another way of telling Mississippi and the Dobbs case, which everybody knows by now, that sure, go ahead and restrict abortion after fifteen weeks. Justice Alito said, look, we're going to have for the five justice conservative justices, including himself, five other conservative justices. Look, we're going to have to deal with this sooner or later, so let's just do it now and get it out of the way.

And by the way, if this has a political effect, for good or for bad, that is not our problem. We do not worry about politics, he said. We just worry about the law. It turned out, I think that probably the justices across the ideological spectrum, as I was, were quite surprised by the impact of outright over ruling Row during this midterm election year. Abortion has always been obviously a really compelling turnout generating issue for conservative voters,

for evangelical voters, and therefore a boon to Republicans. It turned out more than anybody had anticipated in the past, because the notion that Row was under siege, that there was a threat to Row had never gotten Democratic voters out before and never gotten pro choice voters out to vote for Demo crats. This time, after the Court acted, it really got everybody off their duff's, really got them to the polls, made a difference in a lot of races, and it was at or and you're the top of

voters most important issues. We're in this sort of weird period now where Roberts has lost control of the court. There are these three justices who they moved fast, they broke a lot of stuff, and now they're back for another another season. I mean, how do you think this plays out? I think it's more than three. I wrote it an say last year called Rule of Six, and some of my liberal lawyer friends actually thought it was too dire, but it basically said watch out for this court.

This is a court that has really ignoring the guard rails, is not going to slow down, is not going to take things step by step. And that turned out to be true because there is an exponential difference between five conservative justices and six conservative justices, because with five they can go much farther doctrine Lee, and they can go much faster. So we're what we're gonna see. We saw

it last year. Obviously they overruled Row, but they dramatically extended the reach of the Second Amendment and really constrained what the federal government, states and cities can do to pass um what I would consider rational gun laws. They really restricted the power of the administrative state in this case called West Virginia versus e. P A, which was climate change, but really invented a whole new doctrine that's

going to hamstring regulatory agencies across the governmental landscape. And this term they've tied up, among other things, uh, dismantling affirmative action. So my message another essay that I wrote was buckle up, because if you thought last term was bad, it's not like this one's going to be. Uh. This one is going to have its own turbulence. Let's sort of cycle into the mid terms. You have done this for a while. Were you very surprised by what happened

on Tuesday? I would say that anybody who says they're not surprised by what happened on Tuesday is just full of it. And misremembering what they said on Monday, what they said to their significant others at the breakfast table on Tuesday morning. Come on, who saw this coming. I thought that what we were going to see at best was referring to the mean that things looked great for Democrats over the summer. I never really trusted that. I just thought that was a kind of false spring in

the summertime. But I also thought, if you look at history, if you look at where the president is, if you look at all of these things, I'm not sure I was expecting the red tsunami, but I can say for sure I was not expecting the red trickle that has turned out to be. And I think there are a lot of things that can help explain that. Dobbs is one of them. Trump is one of them. The intersection

of Trump and candidate quality is one of them. And I just think we all should breathe an enormous sigh of relief and maybe question are lurching from assumption to assumption, which local journalism's a little hard for us to actually

pull off. You know, it's funny because I was thinking about that, because you know, a lot of times people will say, like one of the bad things about Twitter, which, by the way, now is the is the upside down world, So who even knows if anyone's going to use it anymore. But like, one of the bad things about Twitter is

there's so much groupthink. And I was thinking about these elections because you know, the few people I saw who I mean, I remember, I did so many interviews, and I would be like, well, if Democrats can keep and and then I'd be like, no, there's no way they can't keep the House. Democrats won't And here we are, and it's like not likely, but it's not impossible that I mean this, Democrats could theoretically keep the House. I mean, like, I do feel like there is a lot of that.

You know, you don't want to be wrong. I think it's more than the whatever went wrong in people's prognostications was more than group think. I ran into a Democratic strategist maybe a week before the election who was just earring it up right that we're gonna lose twenty to thirty seats in the House. And that's the optimistic projection. And the Senate is on a night's edge, the notion that Kevin McCarthy would get a majority. But it's a

majority that you know he'll he'll be jealous. I think of Nancy Pelosi's majority if and Wendy becomes Speaker is

just extraordinary. And the idea that we have spent these billions and billions of dollars to end up with something that is, if Republicans take control of the House, it will be significantly different from where we were before, but another very close house, even closer house than another super close likely Democratic, I think at this point, Senate, Wow, yeah, I mean, the historical precedents for this is like there are three elections in this century where the president and

power has been able to keep the majorities. Do you think that Biden is like this sort of underestimated. I mean, I feel like the whole administration has been really underestimated. Well that might be, but I'm not sure that Biden explains this outcome. What do you think does Biden did get some things, important things done and important things past, but I'm not sure voters awarded him for that. And It's clear that voters don't want him to run again.

So I'm having a hard time assigning him credit for this outcome. I am more assigning blame for the outcome than I am credit. That is to say, blame on the Supreme Court from the Republican point of view, or thank you sam Alito from sure. I guess from my point of view, since I've never actually said blame on you know, among at the top of the heat Donald Trump. He picked a lousy candidates and then didn't fund them.

So that's where we are. And I think it's much more a revulsion at those candidates, of revulsion at the Court all worry about anti democratic election denying craziness that people are witnessing, than it is an endorsement on Biden. And you could tell that really from the White House argument, because the White House argument was, this isn't a referendum on a We don't want it to be a referendum on us. We know if it's a referendum on us, we are going to get shelect. Uh, it's a choice.

So that's why I'm not given president credit. Yeah, exactly, But I want to get into that for a second.

It does seem to me like in these midterm elections, voters rejected this authoritarian vision that the GOP had, right like, voters rejected especially like these candidates like I don't know if carry Lake is gonna win, but all the other ones of these election dies, not all of them, but a large quantity of these, like swing state election deniers who were trumpy enough to win a primary, those guys

lost the generals. I mean, so I do feel like that authoritarian vision, the sort of Peter I don't even want to say his name, but you know, that's sort of the funder of Jade Vance, that those people sort of vision has really the American people don't like that. I think they don't like it, and that is great, that is great news. But there were are two scary

things that remain. One is the number of election deniers that were on the ballot, and a number of them did get elected, not and not the scariest ones in the scariest places, So we should be thankful for that. The other thing that continues to scare me is the fact that of the electorate believes the big Law. It

cannot be dislodged from their head. If you had told people in sixteen that people were going to believe four years later that the election was stolen from the candidate who lost it, I don't think people would have believed you. And I think, well, I don't mean to be negative, because I think I my overwhelming feeling about Tuesday's results or the results whenever we get them, is huge relief. But we really need to continue to be unsettled about

where we are. Yeah, And also I think that that's a good point that the sort of shift, the way that Trump has gotten the Republican Party to shift, really is an important piece of data. Now. You know, among the really stupid columns that I've written in the past was one probably in fifteen maybe twenty sixteen before the election that talked about how one reason we didn't really need to worry that much about Trump that I was worried about him was there wasn't going to be Trumpism

without Trump. In other words, he didn't have an ideology, he didn't have a vision. So once he faded from the scene, whatever horrible things he had, however he had perverted our democracy would be in the rear view mirror. That was just idiotic. Maybe not at the time, but it's certainly idiotic in hindsight, because he has left this toxic legacy of conspiracy, theorism, tendency toward authoritarianism, at election denialism.

That is just if he shuffles off the scene tomorrow, it's still going to be with us, right, No, I think that's right. I mean, it's been interesting to see the people who were able to carry on this Trumpist legacy, and they tend to be people like to scantists. We'll see if carry like gets elected. But like I wrote like ten different pieces about how trumpis um doesn't scale, and it ends up it does to a certain extent. We'll join the crowd. That point about the election deniers

is really important. It's like it infects everything trumps um. But we we had the candidate for governor in Wisconsin say if I am elected, no one but a Republican will ever win an election in Wisconsin. Again, how un American, how undemocratic, how outrageous is that? And we just kind of gulped about it, but moved on. Now we're still there are a bunch of seats that are not decided. The houses not decide. The Senate is not though it seems like the Senate will go for Democrats. How do

you think now it plays out? We've got a special election in Georgia. I mean, what, what do you think the next month looks like? What the next month looks like will be determined by what the next several days or week looks like in Arizona and Nevada, because if the Georgia race turns out to not be determinative of the outcome, then it will be hard fought, but not cataclysmic thermonuclear level thought. If things get split there, then we just have Georgia, you know, two point oh yet again,

and you just have to um. I'm kind of having a little bit of a nice time imagining being inside Mitch McConnell's head, at bit of clothes at having through this again and seeing once again, honestly, a majority, a Senate majority that by all normal political metrics should be his yanked away from him by the ineptitude and idiocy of Donald Trump. How do you think the speakership plays out well? Assuming it's Republican? Um, the combination of I'm trying to think of a semi nice way to say this,

and here's how I'm going to say. Kevin McCarthy is no Nancy Pelosi. Yes, And what I mean by that is Nancy Pelosi is a magnificent political and legislative tactician, and she knows how to crack the whip and keep her caucus largely in line. Kevin McCarthy isn't, and the smaller his majority is, the more difficult. His already difficult task will be trying to keep these Freedom Caucus and

other Marjory Taylor Green crazy. We can cross our fingers at Lauren Bobert loses, but he's got the crazy Caucus to deal with. He's not the greatest person to deal with them. They are inclined to flex their muscle, and they seem to be ready to do it to the max.

I'm just braced for, first of all, constant stories about the Kevin McCarthy speakership if it comes to that on the brink uh, and also constant stories about the crazy investigative and other rabbit holes the House Republicans are pursuing. Because he's Kevin McCarthy is not going to have the power over the caucus to settle them down and to

encourage them not to pursue these things. Because if there's one thing that we know about how not to attract voters and keep your majority, it's why don't we go ahead and impeach a bunch of people? Why don't we go ahead and conduct investigations that nobody can even understand and what they're all about. But that's not going to stop them, right, It's like what happened in with Clinton. Indeed, do you see a possible scenario? And again, this is like really out there, but I think I just want

you to weigh in on this. Is there a scenario where two or three more moderate backbench Republicans switched to Democrat to give Democrats the majority in the House? Yeah? Who is the moderate backbench Republican who's left? Seriously? I mean I don't I am not a House expert, but last I checked, Liz Cheney, no moderate, but no back bencher, but reasonable and patriotic reason all about Donald Trump is gone.

Adam Kinsinger is gone, Jamie Harrera Butler is gone. Yeah, all of the people who voted to impeach Trump are gone. So are there two or three that could flip? And they'd have to be in a district where that would work to their favor And that just seems I was that seems pretty remote to me. I was wondering actually whether there was some possibility that Democrats could lure Lisa Rakowski over to their side of me? Right, But she

may lose. She may lose, but I was wondering if if she wins, and if control hangs in the balances, she fed up and up with her party, that she might write. I don't think so, but let's you know, the lays that likely as the defecting Republicans on the other side of the chair. So interesting, Ruth Marcus, thank you for joining us. I hope you'll come back. Fun to talk. I'd love to great. Jacob Rubashian is an analyst at Inside Elections. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jacob, thanks

for having me. So we're in this super interesting post election election counting fiasco is happening. Well, what we ended up seeing happen on Tuesday night was Democrats really holding their own in pretty much all of their competitive races across the country except in a few local areas where

they really did suffer serious losses. And what that means is that instead of a red wave materializing or a massive Republican year like some out there had had said was was on the way, we're seeing Democrats in strong position in the Senate, certainly having to win just a couple more states to clinch a majority, and in the House of Representatives, at most, they're looking at minimal losses, and you know, perhaps they even have a path to maintaining a very very narrow majority in the House, in

the House, in the Senate. I think they're they're they're well positioned. Yeah, it is, it is. Did you see this coming? I tweeted out a clip of you on c SPAN talking about how there was actually a possibility

that Democrats could run the table. Were you shocked? I wasn't shocked, because when you do look at our individual race by race ratings, and what we do it inside elections, right is we we analyze every single congressional race in the country and we determine how likely we think it is the Democrats will win it or the Republicans will win it, and then we take those ratings and we

try and paint a larger picture. You know. Frankly, we we, as as did everyone else, looked at the macro indicators, the president's approval rating, the economic indicators, and thought that more likely than not, this was probably going to be a good Republican year. So how the races broke down, we expected Republicans would win more of these competitive races. And if you have a Republicans were gonna win because

of the head ones, right, because of the inflation. Yeah, and just traditionally, you know, independence usually break against the president's party in a midterm election. This is the first time. And you know, I try not to use exit polling data all that much because it's it's body and not

a great indicator. But if you look at the CNN exit poll, you're seeing independence break for Democrats or you know, it's a very very close, and that is something Normally we see the president's party lose independence by double digits in a mid terms. So clearly something different happened. And what that meant was when you went back to our ratings, Republicans weren't actually favored in two hundred and eighteen seats, right in our final set of ratings, we only have

them favored into sixteen. And so there still was a path. And that's what I would saying last week on c SPAN was that if everything goes right for Democrats, if everything clicks just the way it needs to, they still have a path to a very very narrow majority. I'm talking to eighteen to seventeen kind of kind of majority. And at the moment that path still exists. Wow, is there a historical precedent for this. The best precedent is probably nineteen the second Bill Clinton mid term election after

the impeachment. Yeah, so it was right in the midst of all of that impeachment craziness that so clearly backfired on the Republicans in the House, costs Newt Gingrich his speakers ship. That was a moment where we saw the president's party not just maintain their majority, or they didn't have the majority, but they picked up seats. Now, Democrats aren't going to pick up seats this cycle. I think we we can rule out that possibility, but the fact that they might come out with a majority is a

historical to to an amazing extent. And I think, you know, look, the world was a different place in nine The country was in a very different place, and and so in some ways, if Democrats maintain the House this year, it's it's an even bigger historical aberration than than ninety eight.

But otherwise it's hard to think of a precedent. You know, it's it's nineteen thirty four in two thousand two are the only times when the president's party has had a good mid term year in the House of Representatives this is so interesting. I want to get into this for another minute. So basically, it seems like Republicans alienated independence. Yeah, that seems to be what happened in everywhere except New York and Florida, which are those two specific localized areas

where the red wave really did hit. And it's quite fascinating. If you had told me a week ago that Rhonda Santis was going to win by twenty points and Marco Rubio was going to win by seventeen points and Republicans were gonna flip four seats in New York State, and then asked me what I thought was going to happen overall. I would have been mr Red Wave if I had

had that limited information. But you know, it was contained, It was contained to those two states and in a really interesting way, and everywhere else, you know, we saw indias break towards Democrats. It's interesting because we know that Ronald Lauder pumped eleven million dollars in to the campaign of Lee's Eldon, which so that could have some effect

on this. Right. Absolutely, I think we are seeing evidence that strong performances at the top of the tip it from governor to Santis, Senator Rubio and then Congressman zelden In in the New York gubernatorial race. All had positive effects for their candidates running down Ballet. The other thing that's going on in New York, Yeah, I mean the Cuomo nonpartisan redistricting, right, Yeah, So New York really got scrambled in the redistricting process. They went through several different

iterations of maps. One passed by the state legislature that was tossed out by a Republican judge up in the upstate New York whose decision was ultimately upheld by the Court of Appeals in New York, which was stacked with Cuomo appointees. There was a new map that was introduced as a remedial map, and then it was overhauled slightly.

But particularly in these areas where Democrats really suffered is where we kind of saw the most significant changes between the first round of the special Master map in the final round, that being you know, Long Island in the Hudson Valley upstate New York. So there were a number of things. There was the redistricting Michigans. I just want to go into the redistricting because I wrote about this in my old when I was at the Atlantic and

it's like kind of an obsession of mine. Cuomo actually set in motion that redistricting in Yes, so Cuomo of course had this unorthodox relationship with the state legislature where he was comfortable with Democrats having less power in Albany because it gave him more power as governor to negotiate with Republicans, and so he was willing to work with Republicans to come up with a map in and a map drawing scheme that was more favorable to Republicans, even

as it also helped him accrew personal power as governor. And that worked great for him while he was governor, but after he was no longer governor, Democrats tried, they tried to re make the redistricting process in a way that would be more favorable wile to Democrats in the state legislature, and they were successful. They changed the law, but they ultimately were stymied by this stupid county judge up state who who decided that the map that they

passed was an unconstitutional gerrymander. So despite finally winning those supermajorities in ten, despite getting rid of Cuomo and having all the pieces in place for you know, there's no reason why New York couldn't have had as an aggressive a map as as Florida had for the Republicans, they

were unable to make it happen. So irritating. What were the other things you were talking about that in New York that you were seeing in addition to, of course the underlying redistricting factors, You did have this governor's race that got really close at the end, and even though Governor hocal one the only one by six points, which for a Democrat in New York is a really really underwhelming showing. You had that Ronald Lauder money coming in

ten or eleven million dollars for Lee's elden. You also had a Democratic Party then in a lot of ways, seems to have atrophied, you know. You you saw certainly in New York City where it's very important for Democrats to turn out, even though they everyone in New York City knows, you know, everyone's going to vote Democratic, but you still got to show up to vote in order

to to win statewide. And we really saw like the Brooklyn Democratic Party totally caught off guard when it came to actually pushing out votes, getting people out to the polls, and when you're when you're putting up the kind of numbers that Lee's Eldon was on Long Island, where he's from an upstate which is trending more conservative. If you're a Democrat, you really got to show up in New York City. And so the party system came very close

to this massive failure. Uh it didn't stay wide, but we saw kind of the lingering after effects out on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley where Democrats dropped four seats, all of which Joe Biden would have carried by up words of six or seven points. These were not swing you know, Trump districts or evenly divided seats. These are seats that vote for Democrats and federal elections

fairly consistently. And that's true in Florida to the state party. Right, isn't that the same in Florida that the Democratic State Party like fell apart there? And I think the Florida State Party, it would be unfair to compare any other state Democratic party to the Florida State Party. I think they they exist in their own league. I think they're going to have to do some massive, massive restructuring over the next couple weeks months, years if they want to

be competitive again. Let's talk about AOC is calling for the New York State Party heads resignation issue right. AOC in particular has has been calling for j Jacobs to step down for quite some time now. I don't think she's the only one who has felt that, the only one who has said that. He certainly took a lot of flak in the in the Cuomo debacle. I think there's gonna be immense pressure to restructure the state party

following what happened and on on Tuesday. I think they're going to claim victory because Governor hocal one and of course there was that state of polling that showed it really close. We probably shouldn't have trusted that bowling, or you know, those of us who didn't trust that bowling

feel a little better. But to have a governor's race, b a six point race in New York, to drop four seats, especially four seats that may well be the difference between a majority of minority for Democrats, I think there's gonna be tremendous pressure to have new leadership there. I I don't know enough about the inner palace politics of the New York State Democratic Party to to say how likely that is or who who would step into j.

Jacob's place, but he's certainly on the hot seat. Now, talk to me about what the rest of the House races look like that we'll decide who controls the chamber. Yeah, So what we're looking at right now is Republicans have clinched, depending on how you want to count, somewhere in the high mid to high two tens of seats, and Democrats have clinched or are are leading in mid to high

two hundreds. And there is a handful of outstanding seats out there that are going to determine whether Democrats can find a way to that magic two and eighteen number. The big picture, of course, is you know, if you look back at our our ratings, our final ratings for the cycle, we had twenty toss up races. We have seen one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,

twelve called four Democrats and three called for Republicans. The path for the Democratic majority is they have to win those other five seats first, which are in California and New York and Oregon and Washington, so these West coast states and then New York, and then they've got to pick off a couple of seats where we thought Republicans were at least slightly favored. They've already started. Colorado's eighth district, which is a new seat north of Denver. We had

that rated as a tilt Republican. It's a highly competitive race. But the Democrat just want is that the Boubert race. That is not the bober race. This this is this is a new seat with no incumbent. The Bobert race is really that came out of left field, and if Democrats can pull that off, talk to us about the Lauren Boubert race, because that's a fabulous one. Yeah. So Colorado's third district, which is pretty much the entire western half of the state, is the home of Lauren Boubert.

Of course, the conservative, fire brand restaurant owner who knocked off a Republican incumbent in a primary in that nobody was expecting to lose. Went on to kind of ally with Marjorie Taylor Green and Madison Cawthorne and some of the more vocal younger Republicans in the House Republican Caucus. We did not expect her to have a particularly competitive race.

This is this is the big surprise here her district was made more republican in redistrict in Colorado's redistricting commission took out some of the more democratic leaning in areas in her district, and so she looked like she was going to be set for re election at least this year.

But Adam Frisch, the Democratic former Athmen City councilman, So you know a guy who has made the best of his position, right, He's gotten in front of national media, he had personal money, he has raised a lot of money. Understood kind of the assignment of what it meant to run against a Republican who inspired such negative feelings from Democrats nationwide. But do it in a way that fit the district. I think what we saw in in some

other places. Take Marcus Flowers, the Democrat who ran against Marjorie Taylor Green, that that was a district that no Democrat is ever going to win that district. Trump won that district by fifty points, and he spent fifteen million dollars. He could have spent a hundred and fifty million dollars and he still would have lost. Maybe he would have gotten a point more than he did, but that's not

Colorado's third. Right, Colorado's third is a district Trump won by six or seven points, So under the right circumstances and with the right Democrat and with the right resources, it could be competitive. Now again, overall, Colorado turned out better for Democrats than I think anyone was really anticipating. Adam Frish has been able to make this a tide race. I think last I checked, he currently led by sixty two or sixty six votes. That's solidly in recount territory.

And we'll have to see how it turns out. But if he wins and flips that seat for Democrats, it makes their path to the majority as narrow as it is much much easier because they need to be flipping those Republican seats. He's not sufficient, but he's probably necessary at this point to get to eighteen. I want you to tell us who the big winners of this mid term war. Yeah, I mean Rhonda Santis number one, number right.

This was a great night for him. He had been taking it on the chin a little bit from from Trump over the last couple of days. Trump really had seemed to start to rev up those those attacks on him, and he gets to walk out of this mid term with a twenty point victory in Florida. The last three Republican governors of Florida won their elections by one point one point and zero point six points, and rohnd De Santa is just one by twenty points. So I think he's he's got to be at the top of the list.

And he's got a supermajority in the Florida legislature now, so he's he's king down there. The other big winners. Look, I think it probably depends on I mean, Gretchen Whitmyer, Right, that's a swing state. She carried it. I mean her opponents sucked. But you could say to santiss opponent sucked too, you know, just Santis's opponent had been elected governor before, you know, I think it. Yeah, but he had also

lost three times. He had he had lost, he had lost, he was his His coupertatorial record was one and one heading into heading into Tuesday. No, I think Whitmer is a big winner here, Tony Evers winning Wisconsin even as Democrats couldn't win the Senate race. Josh Shapiro, obviously, I think is going to be the subject of a lot of chatter over the next two, four, six, eight, twenty years.

When it comes to Democratic presidential contenders, there are other folks out there, you know, who who pulled off victories that that were impressive. You know, even even a guy like Michael Bennett, who I wouldn't say was you know, a quote unquote you know, big winner of the night. But he's looking like he's gonna beat his Republican opponent

by more than ten points. That's his biggest victory in his three times running for Senate so far, and it comes in a race where Republicans really thought they had an outside shot at flipping the seat. You know, look, if if if Sean Patrick Maloney hadn't lost his own seat, he might look like the smartest guy of them all. It really is, you know, obviously unfortunate for him because

he lost. But this is a guy who was absolutely pilloried for most decisions that he made as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, especially this decision to spend money against more conservative Republicans in their primaries to try and elevate them and get them to be the general election nominees. And he may well end up looking incredibly vindicated, I think, frankly, he already has been at least slightly vindicated in that Democrats are are looking at minimal losses.

But if Democrats maintain the House, I mean, that is an amazing achievement for you know, the Field Marshal of the Democratic Campaign Committee. It just so happens that he won't be able to he won't be able to enjoy it. It's it's really um I don't know if it's you know, Shakespearean or if it's if it's Greek tragedy, but it's really quite something to see the split screen there, Jacob so interesting. I could keep you for another ten minutes, but then Jesse will reach this phone and murder maid.

Thank you, yeah, thanks for having me. Roger Parloff is a senior editor at law Fair. Welcome to Fast Politics, Roger Parloff, Thank you very much. So you are in the Oathkeeper's trial writing about it. What is happening. We've finished the government's case in chief, which took nineteen days, and we've started the defense case. We've heard from road to the top defendant Stuart Rhodes himself. The judge hopes to finish next week, maybe by the end of next week.

Explain to us who is on track the Oathkeepers. But it's a group, so explain to us who is in this group. There were actually nine people indicted in this indictment, and then there's another indictment that's closely related, and then seven have already played guilty, So we're really talking about

five different people. But this first case is the top five people and the founder of the Oath Keepers, the lifetime founder and chairman is Elmer Stewart Rhodes the third, and then there's four others who are considered the most important players in this Nine of the top people were actually charged with seditious conspiracy, which is an exceedingly rare charge. Can you explain to us what it means? Yes, roughly,

it can be different things. It can be. For instance, the most famous successful recent case was the prosecution of the Blind Shake in the World Trade Center bombing, so he and about twelve others were convicted in It can be a number of different things, and in that case

it was levying war against the United States. In this case, it's conspiracy to use force to oppose the authority of the United States or conspiracy to use force two prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of certain laws, and in this case it's the laws governing the transition of presidential power. So you know, specifically, uh, the Electoral count Act, the Article to twelve and twentieth amendments. So that sitientive conspiracy

in a nut showing. Like I said, it's been used unsuccessfully more recently than that, But the most successful recent case was the World Trade Center bombing. When was it used unsuccessfully? Well, it was used unsuccessfully in against a weird group called the Hootaies. That's interesting, it's almost reminiscent of like David koresh and in Waco. But it was a far right group and their goal was to murder

police officers. This is what they you know, conspired and they were hoping that this would set off an up a national uprising that would top of the government. It wasn't a well worked out plan, but in the case was tried and the and the judge threw it out before the defense case even he just found that it was too In CO eight, Uh, there was a lot of talk about a conspiracy but no beef. And actually

that's sort of a relevant case here. If here there was an enormous amount of seditious talk, but it's hard to prove an actual concrete plan. So there's some parallels. Yeah, it sounds like there is. Let's talk about the plan. I mean, was there a plan. There was a plan, There was not a concrete plan. There was a tremendous amount of discussion beginning just days after the election about we need to stop Biden from taking power from becoming president.

Step one was to try to convince Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which is something like martial law. But he would always say if Trump doesn't do it, will have to do it ourselves, and it will be a much more bloody revolution slash civil war. And so he says this in many many contexts, some public, some private.

The oathkeepers use a lot of encrypted signal chats. Then he would also say it in a couple open letters to Trump on his website, he would say it in speeches, and it's clear that some of his people took him very literally. But there's no concrete you know, Okay, on the sick, we're going to storm the capital and and here's what we do instead. They come prepared, you know, they've got an arsenal in Virginia. They've got an arsenal at the Comfort in in Arlington County, UM, about ten

minutes away. All these a R fifteens and hundreds and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and actually several other hotels they've got guns in the parking garages and so on. And they say, well, that was in case Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, then we would. And that's a strange

thing too, by the way. But what happens is that, of course, on the six other people, and mainly I think the Proud Boys topple barriers and break the windows and enter the capital, and then sort of opportunistically fourteen oathkeepers certainly enter the capital. And well more than that. There's two groups. And you've seen them, of course in the staff formation, you know, the right hand on, and

of course they're in uniform. Some of them have plate carriers, and all of them have tactical vests and helmets, nearly all of them. Some have bear spray, and and they go in. It certainly looks like a conspiracy. But Rhodes does not go in, and he's out front, and the question is does anyone give them an order to go in? Right, because that would be seditious conspiracy. That would certainly be conspiracy. That would show certainly a meeting of the minds of

everybody that we should go in and accomplish this. What a couple of the members of the conspiracy, if if there was one. Seven people played guilty the various forms of this conspiracy, and two of them testified. So like what one of them said was he acknowledged there was no plan per se. It was opportunistic. But he said, quote, it's this. It was the same idea he's talking about in the signal chats. It was the same idea over and over. We will do something, we will do something,

we will do something. And now here we are in front of the Capitol doors and they opened and it was let's do something. And then the other guy named Gray and Young said almost the same thing. He said, we talked about doing something about the fraud in the election before we went there on the sixth, and then when the crowd got got over the barricade and they went into the building, an opportunity presented itself to do something. We didn't tell each other that meaning to enter the capitol,

but it was common sense. So that's sort of what we know we have. So there's more than that. At two thirty one PM on January six, and to remind you, the rioters break into the building at thirteen, so everyone knows there's a riot going on. At two thirty one, the on the ground operations leader of the oath Keepers that day, guy named Michael Greene, who's not among these defendants,

but he's indicted, he calls Rhodes. At two forty seconds later, defendant number two, whose name Kelly Meg's, he calls Rhodes also, and the first guy is still on the phone, so Rhoades. Nine seconds later, Rhodes merges the calls this is because we have call records, we don't know, you know, we don't have a transcript. So then the three of them are on the phone for nine seconds. That takes us

to the middle of two thirty three pm. Meg's gets off the phone, and then the operations leader continues talking to Rhodes for two more minutes. Two minutes after Meg's gets off the phone, he leads Stack one, which is fourteen Oathkeepers, up the East Capital steps and into a capital. So that's some circumstantial evidence. What do you think the jury is going to do? I think they will convict

on something, and there are choices. Conspiracy is the big issue, and of course the top charge is the big issue, and I suspect that Rhodes. Well, I think there's pretty good evidence against RhoD I'm not sure that all five will be convicted of that top charge. It's even possible they might be concerned about conspiracy. And if they don't convict on conspiracy, remember Rhodes is not in the capital, so they're not going to convict him of some of

the other charges either. They would probably still get him on there's a there there. Four of the five are charged with destroying evidence, including him, so that would still be a strong charge. I think it's not a foregone conclusion, he testified. I don't think that went particularly well. He said.

About that phone call, he said, well, you know it was very hard in you know, in a crowd situation, the phones don't work very well, and so Meg's I couldn't hear anything when he called, and the prosecutor on cross said, so you couldn't hear him, But nine seconds later you merge the calls, and he said, yeah, well, just in case I could, I could catch him. And then they stay on the call for ninety seconds and you're saying, Kelly, can you hear me? Kelly, you know

what is happening here? And that was his defense. And then he called as his own witness, Michael Green, and he testified, which was very unusual, and he wasn't that bad a witness. It's very unusual because he's under indictment. Usually you don't testify in somebody else's case when you're already under indictment. And he said he remembered, he just didn't remember any such calls, so you know, it was a riot. There were a lot of people yelling. He

couldn't hear anything, so that all sounded pretty unconvincing. But that's where it stands. Thank you, Roger, Molly, John Fast. Who is this, Jessie Cannon. Matt Gates lives to fight another day in Congress, so he's decided it's time for him to put his foot down. Show whose boss on

this party? Certainly there's a lot of interesting stuff happening right now in the Republican parties fight for the House, which they still do not as we are taping this on whatever day it is Thursday, we still don't know who is controlling the House. There's California votes, there's Nevada votes, Nevada votes, there's lots of votes that are uncounted. Matt Gates coming in hot with a tweet that says, McCarthy

that's Kevin McCarthy, the want to be Speaker of the House. McConnell, that is McConnell, the wanna be Majority Leader of the Senate. And McDaniels that is Rona Romney. You may remember mits niece who is the head of the GOP Mick failure not quite the word smith. Perhaps it's time for him to hire some writers. That said, I think that the MAGA Caucus is not going to go down without a fight, and Kevin McCarthy is going to go through some things.

And honestly, it couldn't have happened to a more cowardly sickopant. You know, everybody was predicting that they're going to come for McConnell because Trump's been matadum McCarthy because he's weak. But did you see Rona Romney? Did you see that part coming? I no longer I'm in the predictions game. I'm in the wow. I'm here as a conscientious observer. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a to your 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. H