Lawrence O’Donnell, Michael S. Schmidt & Rachel Bade

is a long serving speaker. First, we have the host of MSNBC's The Lawrence O'Donnell Show, Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome back to past politics. Lawrence O'Donnell. Oh, it is great to be back. This is the coolest thing I do. I was saying you were like a fan favorite. Besides having a tell Asian program, you worked in the Senate. You have a really good sense of what the history here is, and I think that all of us sort of forget,

and especially right now. I mean, I'm curious to know, like the the the Senate you worked in, those guys would just be so horrified by what's happening in Congress right now. Yeahent of them would be, with the possible exception of Jesse Holmes, but really at minimum of nine of the senators that I worked around in those days,

including this is a name lost to history. Malcolm Wallap, who was by far the most conservative Republican Senator of the ninety nineties, would be horrified by all of this because he was a decent person who had, you know, a sense of fairness and all that, and what made him the most conservative Republican there was. He was the closest thing to a Libertarian in the Senate at the time and still, you know, a thinking human being. It wasn't this nutty call family version. But he would be

sickened by this. And Bob Dole, who was the Republican leader of the Senate, you know, during my time there, this is everything he feared about his own party, and he saw it beginning with new Ingrich and new Ingdrich hated Bob Dole. New Ingdrich called Bob Dole the tax collector for the welfare state. Because Bob Dole did not try to completely degrade the tax system of America. It's a horror beyond anyone's wildest imagining. Here's the fun fact.

We all thought, anyone working in the Congress and the Senate in the early or at any point in the we thought, this is as bad as it can get. Isn't it too bad that we got to work here at the worst time? You know, is ging Rich Republicanism is getting a foothold, and it was already becoming a roadblocker. You know, Gingrich Republicanism roadblocked what we were trying to do on healthcare reform back then that Hillary Clinton was pushing for the White House, a kind of more complex

version of what Obamacare eventually became. If it were not for Gingrich Republicanism, Bob Dole would have been able to reach a compromise with us in the Senate that would have produced legislation in that would have looked an awful lot like Obamacare, And so you would have had a version of Obamacare in place from onward were it not for this creeping gingridgi ism. And now those look like

the glory days. I often think about this. I just wrote a piece today about McCarthy's problem with Santos is not Santos, It's that Santos is not that different than Marjorie Taylor Green or Paul Gossar, I mean, was it really a weak Republican party that allowed itself to be kidnapped and held itself for ransom? Or is that too simplistic.

One of the problems on the Republican side of politics beginning of the nineteen nineties was their language became ever more extreme, because even then, even before social media, new Gingrich noticed that extremism gets noticed. And when you're working, you know, in a body of four hundred and thirty five, you know, and you're in the minority, which the Republicans were for forty years before, getting noticed is difficult. And ding Ridge got noticed by being inflammatory. And once that happens,

there's only one direction that's going to go forever. And so so here you are, you know, twenty five years later, and the extremist language just becomes more and more and more and more extreme. And it was during the Reagan period when they started to try to make and succeeded in making liberal a dirty word. And prior to that, you know, it wasn't you could stand up and and

say liberal or or conservative and mean it critically. You weren't saying that liberals themselves as human beings, you know, where evil or Conservatives themselves as human beings were evil. That that really wasn't implicit in the kinds of criticisms

that each side would offer about the other. And in those days when uh, you know, a liberal senator or a conservative senator would rise in the Senate or right after his opponent spoke and I say his because they were pretty much all men um and they would do that thing you know that looks incredibly phony, you know, like my distinguished friend from Missouri. And here's the thing. They meant it. They meant it right, And so that defined the dialogue. Then it wasn't this vicious attack thing.

What King Ridge invented was the complete demonization of the person. So they were not satisfied with criticizing the idea. They were going after the demonization of the person. Because once you've demonized the person, every single thing that comes from that person is dismissable. And so Republicans went hardcore down that road of of demonizing the people and and and that's where they are now, right So so they don't have to All you have to do is say the

word Hillary. In that world, that's it. You're done, you know, because they've completely demonized her and many others so that you don't have to think about what they said. Here is a moment of in the United States Senate and

the spring of how different that world was then. Because Leon Panetta, who was then the White House Chief of Staff, came up to the Democrats policy luncheon, which I used to attend because there's only there's only two or three staff members who were allowed in that room, but the staff director of the Finance Committee has kind of a permanent past to be in that room, so I was

always in that room. And he had a strategy for for the healthcare bill that the Democrats were trying to bring or have brought to the Senate floor and we're struggling with on the Senate floor where it ultimately died.

And his strategy was and he didn't like delivering this message, I know because I know Leon, and but the White House decision, the Clinton White House decision, was the strategy of the day, and the Senate should be demonized Doll so that all the Senators were to go out there that day and demonized Bob Dole for opposing what Bill

Clinton was trying to do. In the Senate floor, and so there was that was greeted generally with silence, and I think Ted Kennedy and a couple others were ready to do it, but we were floor managing the bill. Senator Morning him was And so the first thing that happened after the lunch is we went out onto the Senate floor and Bob Carey of Nebraska, Democratic Senator of Nebraska asked to be recognized, and Senator Morning and immediately

recognized him. And Bub Carrey, who left half of the leg in Vietnam, got up and did a ten minute speech in praise of Bob Dole, who is a fellow wounded warrior from World War Two like Bub carry is. And then after his ten minute praise of Bob Dole, he went on into his welfare, his his his healthcare argument of the day, and Bob Dole was not demonized on the Senate floor because that's not where our politics was.

And now that's all our politics, and it goes both ways, I mean, and by the way, it's become legitimate, there are some demons to put mildly on the Republican side of our politics. Oh yeah. It's so interesting though, because one of the things I keep thinking about is will this because we're we're seeing already the McCarthy McCarthy's House of Representatives, this hundred and eighteen Congress is going to be filled with lunatics running oversight, I mean, running really

important committees. So my question is will this backfire the way that Clinton investigations backfired or will this work the way Benghazi worked on Hillary? Well, I think we're the

point where investigations probably don't have any real effect. Is a kind of a stunning polling number about this um, which is if you look at the most important investigation of our lifetimes, and by the way, I include, since since we're talking about our lifetimes, I include the war in Commission investigation of the assassination of President County, and that the January six Committee is the most important investigation of our lifetimes, and I believe the most important investigation

ever conducted by Congress in its history. And Donald Trump's polling numbers were unchanged for the entire run of those of that investigation, didn't didn't change, but varied by about one point the entire time. Okay, so that tells you this, And by the way, that's not what happened when Richard Nixon was being investigated by by Congress, Richard Nixon's numbers were going down consistently with the findings of the investigations and the revelations of the investigations, which is what you'd

expect from a logical society. There's an indication in that that it doesn't matter what you do in investigations. It doesn't matter how many pictures of Hunter Biden's penis Republicans put up on the big screen and study in their earrings. That it's not going to change any minds one way or the other. And you know, in terms of damage to the government, it's kind of the least damaging thing they can do is run a bunch of pointless and

silly investigations. We're certainly going to see a lot of that. And what I think is interesting, And we actually had a poster on here who talked about this last episode, which is that Trump has lost three elections for Republicans, right, and what we saw on this mid term especially which I was very heartened by and I think you were heartened by this too, But maybe I'm projecting, but that the voters did not like these crazy candidates like Carry Lake unless it was a ruby red state. The voters

really rejected these trumpy candidates. So you would think that a Republican party that was acting smartly would you know, start to try to take the pain and change their track. But that's not happening, no, And that's what every party did. You know, after elections, you know, after Reagan wiped up the Democrats, they all started moving in a more conservative direction.

I mean, you went from having maybe a couple of dozen Democrats opposed to the death penalty, for example, and the Senate in the nineteen seventies, by the end of the nineteen eighties they were all in favor of it. There was a lot of adjusting in that direction. And after Michael Dukakus lost there was a lot of adjusting because of that. And on the Republican side, they used to try to do the same thing. That's just gone from a politics that is no longer in search of

that voter in the middle. And you know, there's a really important thing that I think it's it's in everyone's analysis, and it's so built in. I think that many people have not quite noticed what they're doing. But the republic Plicans, the Trump Republicans, certainly, and Trump do not now and never have had a plan to win the most votes for president. That's not even in the mix. They don't.

They trump calculation would include the possibility of coming in even farther behind the Democrat than he has in his previous two runs. And it's entirely about the electoral college, about the election. And so because you're you're not trying to get to the middle, you're not trying to win the most votes, then you don't have to get to the middle. You know, you just have to make sure everybody in the South and North Dakota, you know, turns out,

which they're gonna do. And it's just an electoral college strategy. It's not about winning the most votes. And once you drop off of trying to win the most votes and you still get to win the election, that's when you get the kind of you know, non corrective postures that you're seeing on the Republican side. Eventually, they're they're going to have to take the pain. I don't know if

they are. I don't see exactly why they would. The other thing that's happening is the general and specific intelligence level within the operatives of the Republican party is declining dramatically. Okay, So you know, kelln McCarthy is many things, including the single stupidest Speaker of the House in the history of the conference. And so no one can expect Kevin McCarthy

to figure anything out. You know, if you're trying to figure something out and you've got to talk to a Republican, call Mitch McConnell, I don't know who your second call is. That that's how thin the strategic thinking bench is. And Mitch mcconllein is not going to live forever. So you know, Bill Crystal was astonishingly powerful influencer before the term influencer was invented in the ninety nineties in the Republican Party.

He had been Dan Quayle's chief of staff as Vice president, and Bill's father was a respected conservative thinker, and Bill Crystal, out of office kind of not even in our politics, wrote a memo circulated in Washington about why the Republicans should oppose the Clinton healthcare plan and not offer an alternative to it, but just oppose it and vote it down. And that memo became the controlling strategic approach to healthcare. Eventually, even Bob Dole had to go along with it, and

that kind of thing is impossible. Now, I mean, what match slap is going to write a memo that there that Here, hey guys, here's how to here's how to it, Here's how to adjust your behavior. Match match Slap is gonna right that. Now, here's how to adjust your approach to convincing people to do what you want them to do. There's no one, there's no brain left and no strategic brain left in and around the Republican Party to adjust to any so interesting. Thank you, Lawrence, Thank you very much.

Michael Aschmidt is a reporter at The New York Times and author of Donald Trump Versus the United States Welcome Too Fast Politics. Mike Schmidt, thank you so much for having me. Let's first talk about the paperback publication of your book, and then we will talk of other things the book Donald Trump v the United States Inside the Struggle to stop the President. First, I want to ask you, which I think is like the question I always want to ask is like, what's this isn't actually a really

annoying question? So get ready. What stuff did you find out after the book came out that you wish you could have put in there. So what I did was is that as the book was coming out, I sort of realized that there was there was not a hole in it, but there was a part of it that could be built onto it that I had sort of not told, and that was the story of John Kelly. And I had written a book about the attempts to stop Donald Trump, and it mainly focused on Don McGann

and on Jim Comey. And as I got done, I said, you know, if I had all the time in the world and all the energy, I would have written more about Kelly. So what I decided to do is that I took a lot of time and I went out and I tried to tell his story. And instead of the paperback coming out a year after the book comes out, we deleted and I did a twelve thousand word biography on Kelly and his times with Trump. Because I said,

you know what, I wrote this book. I'm probably not going to write a book about John Kelly, but I think his story is important, and it's another way to go out and talk about the book again and talk about the work that I did and tell what I think is an important story. So I did this crazy thing, and we've had this whole then, you know, addition onto the book these twelve thou words, and uh here I am, you know, talking about it again. I think telling it

an important story. One of my kids is like super into military. We were actually talking about this, and I want to ask you someone like John Kelly. I mean, I feel like what happened to him is kind of the worst thing that can ever happen to a career military man. I think that's right now. I don't think that that there's part of it where you Kelly should not be sort of let off the hook. And it's not my job to sort of hold people accountable to

tell their stories. But I think an important part of his story is that he did end up in Donald Trump's orbit, and he had sort of a miscalculation about Trump. He thought that Trump's rhetoric was more about politics, and that when Trump got to Washington, he was going to be sobered by the job and sobered by the process, and was going to be four was to behave in a way that was not like what he was on

the campaign trail. And John Kelly, being sort of a career military person, said well, I'd work for Hillary Clinton and I'd work for any president to ask me to do anything, And because of that finds himself in Trump's orbit, thinking that the institutions will bound Trump, will bind Trump. And obviously that turns out not to be true. But

but Kelly finds himself in Trump's orbit. Then you know, he's his secretary of the part of phone land Security, and Trump sort of snookers him into becoming his chief of staff and he's in the White House in July of two thousand seventeen and he says, oh shit, this is far worse than I thought it was. I thought that Trump needed process and he needed to be better staffed. And he says, oh my gosh, this person is worse than I ever could have imagined. He later told people,

I didn't know they made people like that. Now, Kelly could have quit at that point. He could have and you know what, screw this, I'm out of here. And he could have done that, but he said, look, I wasn't gonna quit on the battlefield. I'm not going to quit in the Oval office. And he basically takes as much pain as he can for the next eighteen months to try and contain an unbound president right and me and and then he finds himself in this absolute partisan disaster.

So I think Kelly going to the White House, for Kelly was like crossing a line that he never wanted to cross. He looks down on partisan politics. I mean, I don't think you would say I look down on it, but he does not think highly of partisan politics, right. Well, the whole idea of these guys is that they consider themselves to be beyond it. And here he is basically going to work for the most political creature of all time, you know, someone who doesn't have fundamental beliefs and is

literally just the political creature. And I think that really he bothered him, but he realized he was so far in at that point that he wasn't going to quit. But the White House was such a much more political place than the Department of Homeland Security, even though the Department of Homeland Security where he was was also political. But it was a cabinet post. It's, in Kelly's eyes,

it's a national security job. It's probably the most thankless cabinet post because it's got the most difficult issues and it has the lead, doesn't have the prestige of being Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. So to him, he finds himself with Trump, who's like the most political thing, and like Kelly doesn't have political aims. He's not Don

McGann trying to remake the federal court system. Right, He's not you know, a liberal like uh, maybe a Gary Cohen who found himself in Trump's orbit and thought they could you know, do something good in the area of expertise. He's like a national security guy who's like a political and now finds himself with a president United States who is is for stupider than he thought, far more immoral than he thought, lazier than he thought, and more dangerous

than he thought. And he says, oh, you know, holy shit, if I thought this was a problem before I got in here, this is much worse than I ever could have imagined. It does seem to me like a case of everything Trump touches does if you think about the post nine eleven generation of military officers, right, Kelly was a guy who had fought in the invasion of Iraq.

He had done another tour in Iraq. He had been the top military advisor to the Defense Secretary, which is a very elite, prestigious role in the military where you're essentially the the military officer chief of staff to the Defense Secretary. He had been the head of Central Command and had sat in the Oval Office or the Situation Room in the White House with Obama and told Obama things he didn't want to hear about the border and about what Kelly thought the threats were to the United States.

He was one of a handful of four star marine generals. The Marines are different than the Army. They do not have so many generals. The army has lots and lots of generals. At its height, the Marines had six four star marine generals. And on top of all of this, he's the highest ranking military officer to lose a child on the battlefield in the post nine eleven wards. His son was killed in Afghanistan. So he comes to this with as a stellar a military record as there could be.

And it's it's a it's a And you know, John Kelly was not a controversial general that ran his mouth to rolling stone. John Kelly was not um an troversial general who became a huge media figure and then had to plead guilty to mishandling classified information. Like David Petres. He was a post nine eleven four star Marine general and he has to battle with Trump and walks out of it with the muck of Trump all over him. And unlike a political character, doesn't go out and tell

a story. John Kelly has written a book. Have you ever seen John Kelly on television? So he's not that type of character. So he's not gonna go out and sort of craft his message. He's gonna say, look, I served my country, you know, thanks a lot. I'm gonna you know, received to cutting down trees or clearing brush or whatever he does, and you know, talking to military groups and law enforcement groups about leadership. I mean, these

are not political characters. But at the same time, his legacy and history has been infused by someone who he hate, Saint Donald Trump, and so he's he's conflicted by that. Um. So I want to talk to you about one of the scoops in this addendum, which is this idea that Kelly may have stopped him from bombing North Korea. And it certainly seemed with a lot of the reporting that we saw coming out of the Trump White House, that Trump had a very itchy nuke finger that he was

not able to use. Can you talk about this? So I think that this is and this is like one of these examples were like the the the success of what Kelly's done here will never weigh as much as if he had been a failure. If he this had been a failure, then this would have been like one of the defining things of Trump's presidency, if not American history.

And basically what happens is that when Kelly comes in, he realizes that not only is Trump, you know, far worse than he thought he was, but that the biggest problem he has. And if you remember, at the time, we think the biggest problems are the Mueller investigation, or

Trump obstructing justice or his ties to Russia. Kelly is completely convinced the biggest problem is the fact that Donald Trump may put the United States at war with North Korea because his public rhetoric is signaling that he wants to use force. He's also saying that in private, the North Koreans are responding with tests and with their own rhetoric, and Kelly, being a student of history, thinks signals can

easily be misread. You have two people here who need to appear strong, and if there is one thing that goes wrong, and let's say the North Korean's launch a missile somewhere towards the United States and we have to shoot it down. We're gonna have to respond, and all of a sudden, we're gonna be at war, and we're gonna be at war with Donald Trump as our president. And Donald Trump looking trying to look strong, and he's

his holy shit, it this could be awful. So what he does is he says, he's like, I gotta get a handle on this, and he tries to to use process to sort of like get this back on track, and he brings in the other generals and they brief Trump and they say, look, if you do this, you know you know, here the options we have, and here are the consequences, and thousands of people could die if

there was a conflict. And that doesn't get through to Trump, and Kelly tells Trump, you're going to destroy the economy that you created, and that doesn't get through to Trump, and Kelly, sort of searching for for some way to get through to Trump, finally appeals to his ego and says, look, you're the ultimate dealmaker. Every president back to Eisenhower, has never been able to cut the greatest deal in the world with the North Koreans. You can do this. Why

don't you engage directly with Kim? You are the dealmaker, You're so good at this. And Kelly does this knowing that it's not gonna lead to a d nuclearized North Korea, but it is going to ratchet back the public rhetoric and the public and private rhetoric about war. And if you remember Trump saying little rocket Man, fire and fury, I mean, these are very famous moments in the Trump presidency.

And they're famous because Trump is looking like he has an itchy trigger finger, and like from the United States, like, oh, it's one thing if Trump is an itchy trigger finger, but if you're North Korea, you're like, holy sh it, this guy is really gonna do this. In the North Koreans are obsessed with the United States, and here's the president who says I'm gonna bomb you. So Kelly is terrified they're gonna take some sort of move, and by

doing that, he moves Trump off that rhetoric. Because if you look at the ark of the Trump presidency, one of the greatest unanswered questions is like, how do we go from fire and fury and little rocket Man and my buttons bigger than yours to the love letters, like how did you get there? It's like and it was one of these things that sort of happened, and we

didn't know the story in between. And look, I'm sure there's a lot of reasons we got there, but one of them was because John Kelly in one on ones with Donald Trump. John Kelly, who probably spent more one on one time with Trump than anyone else in seventeen and eighteen, is saying, you're the greatest dealmaker in the world. You can do this, And Kelly's trying to charm him into charming Kim to stop this rhetoric, and he's successful

at it. It's so interesting. So were there other places in which Kelly was able to kind of trip Trump into not going to war on war? No, I mean, I think Kelly spends a lot of his time just trying to get through the day with Trump in terms of military stuff. I don't know what else Kelly was

able to talk Trump off of. I know he talked to him a lot about the border and trying to stop Trump from doing these outrageous things at the border, putting alligators in the water, hutting people on the legs right, and also bombing right, yeah, and using force against Mexico and pointing the finger at someone else. Had told Kelly that he wanted to use a nuclear weapon. He cavalierly said, well, why don't we use a nuclear weapon against North Korean?

Just blame another country. And Kelly says that you can't do that. It's to be very difficult to do that. You can't just point the finger at someone else. But Kelly's battle was it just a day to day battle with Trump to get through the day. And most presidencies are like planned out, like months, you know, weeks in advance,

and Kelly just tried to get through the day. He would just be prepared for Trump to come down sometime late in the morning from the residents and be obsessed with something he saw on television and let that dominate the rest of his day and just try and get through that day without Trump breaking the law, doing something unethical, damaging himself for damaging the country. That was the day today goal of John Kelly. He didn't have the ability

to think any further ahead than that. You had a scoop that d J had talked to Mike Pence uh in November remember November. What do you think is happening with the d o J. At some point d o J reaches out to Pence's side to say, we're gonna want to talk to pens and that begins what will be a lengthy process in which the Justice Department tries

to talk to Pence. What will happen is that Trump's lawyers will come in to try and stop that block that you know, narrow the questions because of executive privilege, and it will go on for some time. We've seen similar fights like this in terms of getting the cooperation of people like Pence's chief of staff, Mark Short. It does not mean that pent is gonna go flying into a grand jury tomorrow, um, but it means that they're

on that process, and they're on that track. It's just a sign of how long and slow these things take. I don't think there is a more deliberative slow body than the United States Justice Department. And I realized that leaves a lot of people frustrated on all sides. But we're just on a slow track here in which it will go along and go along for months and months and months until we really have any clarity about what

they're doing. So we do have now two different special counsels, one dealing with the Biden papers, one dealing with the very different case of all of the Trump papers. I do feel like the more Trump tweets, but he's not tweeting anymore truths, the more Trump truths about the documents, the more it actually hurts him, right like he was

true thing about all the empty folders. I think it is a good point because I think some of the conventional wisdom has been and I've said this myself, that the fact that Biden did this makes it more difficult to prosecute Trump, because the question of of prosecuting a former president or someone who's running for president is so extraordinary that it's not just that you have to explain

it to a jury. You're gonna have to explain it to the American people, and the American people are gonna have to in a digestible way, understand why you're doing what you're doing. And if Biden's Justice Department, while Biden and Trump are running against each other, charges Donald Trump, just think about like how extraordinary that would be. And the first reaction to people as well, well, didn't Joe Biden do that? And it's a difficult thing to explain

to the public. I can see the Justice Department having real pause about that because it will be politicizing in the department in a way that I'm sure someone like

Marrick Garland will be very concerned about. At the same time, if Donald Trump continues to talk and act in a way that is in your face, above the law, admitting to crimes, looking like he's interfering with the investigation, he puts the Department continuously in this position of like, okay, so, like, I understand, you aren't going to prosecute for these things. But he went on to admit to all of them, and he interfered in the investigation and through sand in

the gears of it in the process. And I think that that if you're Donald Trump's lawyer and Donald Trump is listening to you, you know, Donald Trump stops talking, that has never happened, um, and that doesn't that that just doesn't happen. So but when I saw his comments yesterday, I thought to myself, you know, if he keeps this up, he makes it even harder on the Department. And I know people will say, look, you know, the public, you know what goes on in the public rhetoric should not

affect what the Department's going to do. But like, at the end of the day, this is such a big decision to charge someone like Trump, that everything that goes on publicly will have some sort of role in it and it can't help him, right, No, I mean, it does seem like he's hurting himself. Mike Schmidt. I hope he will come back. Thank you so much for having me. I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of

pieces pundentry 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. Rachel Baide is a senior Washington correspondent and politico and author of Unchecked. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rachel, thanks for

having me on. Molly. I have been dying to talk to you about this Congress, and every time I read playbook, I'm like I have to talk to her. I just dying because it's like every day is to have a Congress. I mean, I know Congress has had historically. We just had Lawrence and we talked a lot about history. There's been crazy ship that's happened in Congress before, but I feel like what's happening now is theatrical on a whole other level. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be like

watching a wrestling match every single day for reporters. It's fun. I covered the last House Republican majority under President Obama and that had a lot of fireworks. But this is going to be like something we've never seen, at least in recent years. Let's just talk about what this sort of stage is. McCarthy has the speakership fourteen votes, got it on the fifteen. But this is what I don't understand. And maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm sure

my dad will appreciate this. McCarthy got it on the fifteen vote, and people like Matt Gates never voted from McCarthy right, He just changed his vote to present. But yet, you know, like he didn't go after Matt Gates for not supporting him. He doesn't have the power to do that. He's going to be an incredibly weak speaker because of this very slim margin he has in the House right now, being able to only lose five Republicans at any given time.

And because of that, Conservatives, you know, he basically had to give away the store. He gave them a lot of plush committee assignments, which we sort of saw the results of that this week we can talk more in detail about that. One of the sort of bigger things he gave them was three seats on the House Rules Committee, And that might seem like very wonky in terms of like technical language for listeners, but it's really important because while he got the gavel, he gave away the House.

That panel sets the rules for the floor and basically dictates what any given bill looks like, no matter what it looks like coming out of committee. So Conservatives now run the place. McCarthy is speaker in name only, and because of that, he doesn't have the ability to punish these guys, because if he does, they could motion to house him at any moment, and they could easily get

the votes to send him packing from Washington. This is a lot different than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, yes, she had a little bit of a rebellion on her hands when she tried to become when she became speaker again in twenty nineteen, but she not only you know, won her critics, she also punished them. And that relates to your question. And you know, people because of that, we're afraid to cross her. Yeah, that was my question. Talk to us about this rules committee and then the other thing.

I just want you to answer for me because this is something I've read about, but I haven't gotten to ask any congressional reporters, so you're more than just a congressional reporter. But we still don't know the extent of the things that McCarthy promised. I'll start there on that. So there's been a lot of controversy because a lot of Republicans who have been loyal to McCarthy have sort

of been privately squawking about everything he has given. These conservatives, I mean, they say they have been loyal to him, they weren't trying to use their vote to leverage you know, plumb committee posts, etcetera. But the most sort of sensitive issue is this question of who's sitting on what committees.

I remember there was this meeting that happened right off the floor when one of the Conservatives was trying to get a subcommittee gattle on the House Appropriations Committee, which obviously dictates where government money has spent, a very powerful panel um and one of the Conservatives wanted to lead one of those subcommittees. And you know k Granger, who's the chairwoman of that panel, and all her cardinals subcommittee chairman who already have those positions met off the floor

and we're like, McCarthy cannot do this. He's going to have a problem with us if he does this. McCarthy came out and said he has not promised any gabbles for this position and for these votes. But we saw one of those members get a subcommittee gabble one of those conservatives this week, and so there are a lot of members who are, frankly, they don't trust McCarthy. They feel like he he has said a lot of things publicly over the years and then done different things privately.

So there's a lot of distrust right now, and people are upset that a lot of these conservatives ended up on these plush panels when they feel like they didn't earn them. Yeah, that's going to be a problem from McCarthy because he's going to need that when he wants to pass up right, that's exactly right. And also, you know you mentioned the Rules Committee and wanting to know

more about that. The reason that panel is significant is because, like I said, they sort of dictate what bills look like that come to the floor, whether they're allowed to have certain amendments or not. It's basically always been seen as the quote Speakers Committee sort of stocked full of the speaker's most loyal allies who will basically do the bidding of leadership. And it's been like that for decades,

since the nineteen sixties or something. What McCarthy did was give conservatives all the power by putting them on these panels. And that means chairmen and chairwomen who are you know, passing bills and committee and then sending them the Rules Panel. They have different views than a lot of these conservatives. You know, they might be more pragmatic, more moderate. But now these conservatives can take those bills and totally change them to look like what they want to look like.

And so that's going to cause again a lot of internal drama amongst McCarthy's members. So who is on this House Rules Committee? They're determining all that. This week we're going to see at least three conservatives, and that's going to be enough to basically have a veto power over everything. And then one of the thing I would say about the Rules Panel, its job is not only to decide what legislation comes to the floor. Its job is also

to decide what doesn't come to the floor. And that's is just as important because there's a lot of moderate members who don't want to take votes on, you know, issues that the base really loves. For instance, with Democrats, it was Medicare for All. Pelosi specifically made sure no amendment ever came to the floor on Medicare for all because she didn't want to put her front liners in

these very difficult positions. But now conservatives are going to make Republicans in districts that Biden one take a whole host of votes on really controversial things that the base loves, but that would really hurt them politically. So again something to keep an eye on going forward. Oh, that is so interesting, right, that makes a lot of sense. And there are a bunch of new Congress people right who

came from Biden districts. That's right. And now they're going to be having to take these votes that are no doubt going to be used in ads against them, which could potentially make them lose the House in the fall. So again McCarthy putting his ambition to be speaker over perhaps the good of the majority in a lot of people's views. So I want to talk about the dead ceiling because that feels like a sort of a kind

of anvil. If this is an episode of um road Runner, that anvil is right over McCarthy's had, and also all of our heads, can you explain to us sort of where that is right now? Well, everybody's trying to figure out how they're gonna find a way to get out

of this. I mean, McCarthy has basically drawn this line in the Sands saying that they are not going to raise the dead ceiling unless they get Republicans get some sort of mandatory cuts, cuts to mandatory spending like Social Security, UH, Medicaid, etcetera. But obviously Democrats control the Senate and the White House

and they're not going to go for that. And so the problem Republicans have is, for three times under Donald Trump, they raised the debts sailing without any cuts and without even having a discussion about demands for these spending cuts now that you know they don't have power anymore, or they only have the House, they want to make these demands when they passed up their own opportunity to do something about this. And so number one, it looks you know, hypocritical.

Number two, with Democrats not being willing to make these cuts, we could potentially see a default on the debt, which you know, the ex deadline everybody calls it, that's going to come up in June. And so you know, McCarthy is facing this threat of being outsted as speaker from conservatives if he were to just put a clean debt limit bill on the floor to you know, raise the

debt ceiling without any cuts. And so it's going to be up to a band of moderate Republicans to join with Democrats and the House to basically do this end run around McCarthy, uh to try to raise the debt ceiling and avoid this sort of economic calamity that is we're looking at right now, and that that's not easy to do, you know, it's own simple, but you know a lot of these Republicans, if they're willing to do that, the chances are. They're going to face their own primaries

back home. They're going to get you know, assailed by people like Sean Hannity, Moore, Ingram, and so it's not as easy as it sounds for these guys. And so

it's going to be ugly. And I think like for the first time in a long time, reporters on the Hill are concerned that it's not only going to be you know, a downgrading of the US credit rating like we saw a couple of years ago amid the sprinksmanship, it could actually be a default of some sort, and that could have devastating consequences on every single American in various forms. I mean, that does seem like a real

danger that could be imminent. That's right. And one of the big headlines that came out this week was that House Republicans, McCarthy and these conservatives, they're trying to put together this plan to quote prioritize payments when we hit

the X States. So basically say, okay, if we're hitting up against default, yes, Janet Yellen at the Treasury Department, you're going to pay our creditors, You're going to pay Social Security, You're going to pay for the military but you're going to stop all this other funding, and basically that would be across the board, cut to all these programs from you know, food stamps, housing assistance to even you know, for Republicans who care about the border, it

would even be border security that would get cut. So the problem with this is Jack lu the previous Treasury secretary under Obama, he called this quote default by another name, because you're still not paying bills that you've already authorized spending for. And so it's it won't solve any problems. It likely will still result on the credit DOWNRD. And not only that, but Democrats will never pass a bill lining up this sort of strategy. They just won't go

for it. You're gonna hit a sort of brinksmanship. I also, I think, I mean, and again you know this better than I do, but it does seem like McCarthy is having a very hard time getting his people to even do things he wants. So how is he going to get that to sort of come along with something that

he's sort of on the fence about anyway? Right? I mean, getting these cuts past It's not the clearest thing to do anyway, you know, And there's gonna be a lot of dissent about what to cut him, how to cut it, and ultimately, if he can't get elected speaker, how can he do more complicated bills? He can't. And so I think a lot of the question, you know Republicans are asking right now privately, is how long will he be Speaker? And what manner is he going to go out in

terms of leaving the House McCarthy. You know, if he's being realistic, should be thinking in legacy mode. What sort of legacy does they want to leave? What's the last thing he wants to do in Congress? And you know, if he's thinking that way, perhaps he sort of falls on his sword and says, look, Conservatives, like we we put up a good fight. Democrats are not going to

do this. We have to raise a dat ceiling and tries to lead a portion of his conference to vote with Democrats raise a dance ceiling before something terrible happens to the economy, and then he would of course be outsted. They would motion to vacate and they would have to elect a new speaker, or he could do what we've sort of seen him do in the past few months and actually the past couple of years, which is he sort of leans on his moderate Republican members to do

the hard job, right, and he plays the antagonist. He was on the side of conservatives, so it gives them sort of a wink and a nod to go ahead and team up with Democrats or say something publicly that would help him. We saw him do this in the speaker's race quite effectively. Actually, it was moderate Republicans who were saying, look, if we don't have McCarthy, we could potentially see a speaker Hakim Jeffreys, which was never going to happen, but it was a talking point that helped

McCarthy and so they certainly circulated it. So will those moderate Republicans take the weeknd the nod from McCarthy joined with Democrats, But again, they're gonna get pummeled, so it's not easy. He's basically pushing these members out to do the dirty work for him to try to save his speakership. So crazy, I mean, he's really gotten himself in an impossible situation. Yeah me, and it's going to be tough.

And I mean, even if I think the dead ceiling, the fact that it's coming in June now, which was one of the big headlines that this week. It doesn't give lawmakers a lot of time to figure this out. I mean, I think originally we are thinking we're going to hit the dead ceiling in the fall, sometime around like September October. That timeline means things are these conversations

need to happen right now. There has been a little bit of talk about a quote discharge petition where five Republicans will team up with all Democrats in the House to force a vote on a clean dead ceiling bill, but even that has complications. It takes forever to do and they would basically have to start the process like in the next couple of days if they want to do this before that June ex deadline. So it's it's really not looking good and it's anyways gas as where

this could go. One last thing I would mention on the dead ceiling is Joe Mansion, who is in Davis, I believe this week, who would hope So he floated this idea of a quote rescue committee with McCarthy a pair recently, basically suggesting to him, you guys raise the debt ceiling with us, and we will form this panel where they will look at mandatory spending, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etcetera. And come up with ways to make them solvent in

the long run. And you know we'll do that together. But the problem is this has been tried before with the super Committee in Tleven and it failed up busmally, So why would it work now when Washington is even more partisan that we've ever seen. It's really hard to predict where this is going to go. But that's something else to keep an eye on. That could give them a good cover though those Republicans right, if they wanted

to sign on it could. It certainly could, but probably not enough of a cover to keep Matt Gates from filing a motion to vacate Ken McCarthy and booting him from Washington. My question is the talented Mr Santos. Yeah, I mean he every day, he's single day there's I mean, Drudge has like a little section on him. Now. I know. I feel like every Washington publication probably just needs his subhead somewhere on their website latest Santo's drama. It's just

it's crazy. I mean I remember this week reading that store. I don't know if you saw that story about the dog or the scarf, the dog, scamming a wounded veteran and his assistant dog who needed emergency surgery, raising money for that surgery, and then stealing the funds and not letting the dog. You know, the dog ends up. It's just horrible, like, how do you do this? How do you do this? So what's going to happen to this guy?

I mean, obviously there's going to be a ton of federal investigations, but the realities those things take time, and House McCarthy, because of his very slim majority, he's not going to move to punish the sky in any way

center for him. He's seated on a committee. I think it's a small business committee, given that he's lied about everything when he past, right, McCarthy sort of line on this is, you know, Republicans or anybody who's acute as if something, you know, an investigation has to play out, there will be a House Ethics Committee investigation as well. But again, that panel rarely rebukes members and takes forever

to do anything. So this guy is going to be in Congress for what Yeah, can you just explain one last thing and then I promise I'll let you go. There was talk about McCarthy stripping the Ethics I mean, the Ethics Committee, by the way, has never found anyone, has never punished anyone ever, so I mean not ever. But you know, it's not famous for its uh you know,

swift justice. But is that being stripped or now. Yeah, So there's just outside sort of congressional ethics watchdog who in the past has made referrals to the Ethics Committee, and a lot of them have actually gone places, although like you said, the Committee rarely punishes anyone because they're run by lawmakers who don't want to be punished themselves.

So there's that conflict. Basically, McCarthy is deactivating that sort of outside watchdog group, and so there's a lot of concern about who's going to be telling the public about some of these things that are not happening. I mean, in theory, this group could still do their investigations and go public and try to sort of force some sort of public action on members. But the fact that there's no longer going to be this partnership, I mean, leaves Congress open for a lot of um, a lot of

misuse and abuse. So it's going to be a problem. Yeah, thank you so much, Rachel I hope you will come back. I will anytime. Molly John Fast, Jesse Cannon Trump. You're always wondering. Is it the cognitive decline? Is it having no filter? Is he just a moron? Tell us what happened and what your take is. We're talking about the ee Gene Carol case. E Gene Carol, friend of the show and friend of mine and friend of my mother's a long time ago, is pressing charges against Trump. They

are going to trial, actually quite soon. During one of the depositions, Trump made this mistake confusing a picture of ee Gene with a picture of Marla Maples, who we should note for those who don't remember ancient history, as his former wife. One of Trump's typical, very classy defenses was that he would not rape Egean because she wasn't hot enough. This is, like, by the way, his favorite defense because it's both misogynistic and misogynistic and also misogynistic.

This confusion of Eugene Carol and Marla Maples actually shows that he thought she was his wife. Ergo, he did find her attractive enough to want to engage with, and thus he gets a hearty fuck you from us. Donald Trump is our moment of fun Gray yet again, forever and ever and always a true King, true King. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 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