Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And we have reports that show Dianne Feinstein is in far worse health than her staff is closed. We have an excellent show today, a show of shows Representative Jake Ackenclass and Lucas Kans, who is running to unseat our least favorite runner Josh Holly in the Senate. We'll stop by to talk about just how ridiculous Josh
Holly's new book is. Then we'll talk to the Daily Beasts Sam Brody about all the latest fuckery in Congress. But first we have fan favorite friend of mine, the host of the Laurence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's very own Laurence o'donnals. Welcome back to Fast Politics, fan favorite and my personal favorite, Lawrence.
Let me just say something about hosting guests in a tone format. The one thing, the one thing I Lawrence O'Donnell can never say, is this is my favorite guest. You know, I don't think Johnny Carson ever said that. I don't think Letterman ever said that. It's just like, you know, you say that and there's one hundred guests out there who are never coming back.
Let me say, if you say everyone is the favorite.
Guest, okay, then you're covered. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I'm not saying I do that.
Yeah, but you better start now.
I mean, so, let's talk about the fourteenth Amendment. Not without its problems. We are in this debt ceiling situation. It is reliant on the stupidest person to ever have been speaker. Maybe that's a bold statement, Am I wrong?
Yeah? But I believe it's a true statement.
We have looked at the SATs of every speaker going back to seventeen eighty and yeah.
Kevin McCarthy, it feels like he's a man out of his depth.
I actually don't think he is exactly. He's a stupid man in many ways who is the representative of and quote leader of. But we know he's not the leader of the stupidest party delegation in the history of the House of Representatives. So you'd have to look at the Republican House and say, do you have anyone smarter than Kevin McCarthy, And the answer is, oh, yes, sure a few. You know Tom Cole, for example, who used to be
a reasonable Republican. But Tom Cole, now you know, very faithfully follows all the principles of trump Ism and as Kevin McCarthy does, and lives in service to them out of fear of two things in the case of Tom Cole. One is not being re elected and the other is not being able to be chairman of the Rules Committee. If he was re elected and wasn't playing the role of dumb pro Trump guy, then he would not have
a chairmanship. And so that's enforcing the dumb behavior on the very small group of Republican House members who are are not idiots.
Right, and then there are some in that group who are like the Thomas Massey is not stupid, but have such bad libertarian brainworms that there's no help.
You're going to have to do the neurology on distinguishing how libertarian brainworms are different from stupid in any functional way at all.
Right, true, let's just talk about this for a second. We were careening towards a dead ceiling drama. I mean, where do you think this goes?
I have no idea.
Okay, So, audience members, if you don't want to listen to someone who has no idea, this is your moment to go switch over to something else. I feel like that must be declared by everyone participating in this discussion. I've changed my mind about it a few times along the way, and I'm ready to again. In the end, we may look at it and diagram it and say Biden played it exactly right. We don't know that yet,
but he might have done so. And so I have been attracted to the fourteenth Amendment solution so called, in which the president simply says, when you hit the debt ceiling, which is kind of a mythological moment. You know, it's that they're saying it's June first, but it's not exactly like your checking account that it hits, you know, a
spot where there's no money. And so that the president can simply authorize the issuance of new and additional debt because it is his duty, as Lawrence Tribe points out brilliantly, I think it is his duty to faithfully execute all of the laws Congress has passed. And Congress has passed all these laws mandating spending in medicare and social security and defense and education and all sorts of things, and so he must follow those laws. It's his duty to
fund those things. And by the way, there is nowhere anywhere even the hint or suggestion that there is an executive authority presidential or in the Treasury Secretary to decide what bills not to pay. That's not an authority that exists. So the Republicans think, like, sure, you hit the debt ceiling, and then Biden just doesn't pay for anything liberal and he pays for all the soldier stuff. It's like, no, there's no, there's no authority that allows him to do that.
And so I would say, if you were going to use the Fourteenth Amendment power, the power that people believe resides there, I would have announced it a while ago. I might have even announced it in the State of the Union address and just say, the debt ceiling as currently legislated, will intersect, you know, with the debt at
some point later this year. And I want this Congress to know that, absolutely, under no circumstances, will we default on the debt, because I will if Congress does nothing, I will take the action executive action necessary to authorize the extension of additional debt. And then your no negotiation position, I think my guess is becomes even stronger because you're saying to them, look, I don't care if you don't legislate anything, and you're saying it to them six months
ahead of time. I think there's a chance that would have changed the dynamics of this. And the other thing about it that makes it the kind of thing you do want to say six months ahead of time is
there are market issues with it. You know, when you say we're going to continue to extend the debt and expand the debt even though we've crossed the line the number that's in the debt ceiling, the buyers of that new debt, right, the buyers of the new treasury bonds that would be sold under that condition would rightfully demand a higher interest rate because this debt is being issued under a condition we've never seen except back before there was ever a debt ceiling, which is like it's only
been around for less than one.
Hundred years, right, But I mean they just started deciding that it was optional in two thousand and seven, right, that's correct.
We used to pass it by unanimous consent. I thought when I was working on the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over it, that we did only one markup and as they call it in the committee. And one passage of a debt ceiling increase. There was only one I
could remember because the other one we did unanimously. So and traditionally, by the way, in those days, what would happen is the party in power that needed to increase the debt ceiling voted for it, and many of the members of the party not in power voted against it. They didn't obstruct it, they didn't demand anything, they just
voted no. And that's the way they did it. In nineteen ninety three, the first time Bill Clinton had to raise the debt ceiling, you know, Bob Dole led all the Republicans in, by the way, very congenially voting no, not being obstructive in any way. And then you know, fifty seven Democrats, you know, voted to pass the debt ceiling and there was no struggle whatsoever. It was always a posture, you know, because Bob Dole had participated already
in raising the debt ceiling for Republican presidents. And the most regrettable vote, and possibly only regrettable vote that Senator Obama ever cast, was when he was in the minority in the Senate and there was a Republican president. The Democrats mostly voted against the increase in the debt ceiling, and that was just a stunt. It was nothing but a stunt. They all knew the debt ceiling should be increased, and it's fine to cast that vote as a senator
as long as you never become president him exactly. That's the only stunt component of it in the past was that the party that didn't have to vote for it didn't vote for it.
Generally.
There were some principal senators who always voted for it always, you know, no matter who was in power.
Yeah.
Now it's reached this madness level, which you know we saw coming, you know, since election night last year.
I want you to talk me through this because I feel like you have opinions on this too. So we have this Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, who won, He won his primary conservative what worked with Bashir was able to hold onto his seat through Republican primary. I mean, again, this is in no way an endorsement, but more of a question. Here's a candidate who did in a ruby red state, who did actually sort of the Trump hast
made a run at him and didn't win. I mean, do you think this is hopeful or do you just get do you think this is just sort of one of these things that happens.
It's hard to say yet whether it's a trend and the balance of the electorate is relatively unchanged. I mean the electorate. It's not like there's a lot of New Yorkers who go, hey, I want to move to Kentucky, you know, and so it's not one of those places with a very dynamically changing demographic. It's a bit mysterious. I mean, Kentucky has a democratic history. If you go back far enough beyond the nineteen nineties, they all kind
of do those states. But I have a feeling that those kinds of elections are very very much about the individual, very much about the individual. When the Democrat wins in the state that is generally not supportive of Democrats, it tends to be the individual. Historically, that's what it has tended to be. That doesn't mean it's something that's something you can duplicate very easily.
Right, That's the question we're going to be watching in those twenty four elections. Is the Trumpest fever breaking or will they just keep losing?
So there are two factors in this coming election that we've never had before. One is year eight of Trump, right, And so I've always looked at administrations as TV series, you know, and some of them run for four years, which is respectable, and some of them run for eight years, which is considered a very big success for TV series. But what happens in all TV series is there becomes a certain audience fatigue that sets in, and that's that's
why those series end. I mean, I think Er with George started with George Clooney, you know, was his big break. I think Er went like fourteen seasons and it was a giant rated show. But you know, the last three years, the line was just going down, you know, and the show was the show was every bit as good as it was in the in the first year, didn't have George Clooney, so maybe not quite as good. That's kind of the way it works, you know. There's a fatigue
that sets in with these people. So the Trump fatigue question, which is a question for Republicans because Democrats have had Trump fatigue since the second week of his first campaign, right.
That's right around when he came down that escalation.
Right, So there's the Trump fatigue question, how does it work, what's the effect of it? And oh, by the way, in an additional parentheses on the end of the Trump fatigue question, it's the defendant Trump question. You know, the criminal defendant. How many cases is he a criminal defendant in while running for president? That's a weight we've never seen before on a candidate. And then the other part
of it is Roe versus Way. That's the thing that for you know, fifty years stabilized a certain aspect of our politics. And there was a comfort that the people who wanted Roe versus Way to stay in place, They earned their their comfortable sensation that it would stay in place, and they de energized as voters on that particular issue because it was, from their perspective, quote taken care of,
and it's not. We've seen that that dynamic has produced a voting energy that gets you to fifty one percent in places where you know, you couldn't get out of the forties before. Those are the big things, and each one of them are things we've never had in our politics before. You know, we've never had this Row versus Way.
It's been overturned. You know, what does that do at the ballot box and the Trump fatigue factor at this level of it, and with criminal defendant Trump running, and so those all feel like negatives for the Republican side.
To put it mildly, Yeah, it's funny because you know, I was talking to Mike Tamaski about the editor of The New Republican. He was saying that he wondered and again, we don't really know, we really don't know, and we're so far out from the election, but that he could you could see this going very badly for Trump.
I have a suggestion for renaming the podcast. Yes we don't know with Maladjung Fast, our first guest, Lawrence at all, the king of we don't know.
We wildly speculate because that's all we can do.
That's right, or yes, that's right, wild speculation with Malajung Fast.
Yes it's a little long. I want to ask you about this idea. I read a pretty interesting article about this idea of the judiciary being really at this point creating more legislation than any of the legislative bodies.
Is it supposed to be this way?
It's been, you know, trending that way for fifty years. You know, that's what that's what the argument was about Roe versus. Way, was like, okay, we understand kind of procedurally how it ended up here. But one of the reasons that ended up in the Supreme Court is that the Congress had done nothing on the subject. You know, the Congress could have and they did absolutely nothing on the subject. And by the way, they were greatly relieved.
You know, both sides were greatly relieved that the Republicans and Democrats were thrilled that the Supreme Court took abortion out of their hands so then they could just posture on it and never had to do.
Anything right like immigration, right.
Yeah, they loved it.
And so yeah, it's been an increasing trend over time for at least fifty years. Some people would argue, you know, the Brown versus Board of Education is part is part
of that trend, like that should have been legislated. But it goes into incredible levels of complexity in corporate law, and there's all sorts of stuff that the Supreme Court's doing every day, you know, that we don't even know about because there's very very complex, you know, business litigation in there that is in effect legislating, and it is the current condition and the Congress during my lifetime just
chose willfully chose to become weaker and weaker. You know, the phrase imperial presidency did not exist until the nineteen seventies, and one of the things that made it exist was we went to war. We lost over fifty thousand American soldiers in war without a declaration of war. And the one thing that you were absolutely sure of in the Constitution is that the war making power belongs exclusively to
the Congress. And they gave it up, and they gave it up willingly because they as weak politicians, they looked at it and said, geez, that's really a tough decision. I would prefer not to participate in the tough decisions. So then you got this thing, you know called you know, the executive authority of the president to just fire off missiles literally anywhere in the world, like at any time, right right, what do you want to you want to hit Syria?
Go ahead? Do you have any authority to now?
We don't have a document now, And the Congress has never objected to it because of their own weakness. They've done that on a bunch of different fronts, and so the executive and the judiciary have been you know, through Congress's complicit weakness increasingly taking over legislative authorities.
Lawrence, thank you so much. I hope you will come back.
When I come back, I won't know anything.
Jake Achenclaus represents Massachusetts fourth District. Lucas Kuntz is running from the Missouri Senate. So welcome Congressman Jake Auchenclous and Lucas Kuntz. So you guys are here together because you are filming a buddy comedy. No really tell us why you have united to write an op ed together.
So first, Mallie, thanks for having me on. It's nice to be back, and it's a real privilege to be sharing the stage with Lucas. And January sixth, twenty twenty
one was my second day in Congress. It has imprinted itself upon me in a lot of different ways, but one of the defining images from that horrific day for American democracy with Senator Josh Holly first raising his fist in a petulant manner to the crowd, and then hours later scurrying away from the mob, hiding behind the Capital Officers, who he would later vote to defund in an act of cowardice that really kind of sums up his approach
to politics, which is to say, this superficial, contrarian, smug attitude to America's problems that is wholly unsubstantiated by anything he actually does in office to help working people. And Lucas and I are articulating that in plain language for the American public to see and digest.
Lucas explained to us what you're how you got involved in this?
Yeah.
So I'm running against Josh Holly right now for the US Senate seat here in Missouri. I mean, look like people are tired of fakers. We're tired of fakers everywhere, We're especially tired of in Missouri. It's funny, you know, his approval in Missouri's forty two, his disapprovals forty three.
He's underwater in a red state. Like that's an accomplishment, right, And it's an accomplishment that he has pieved just based on his own character, Like Jake says, right, like, the guy's a fraud, he's a phony, and people don't like him. And he does this like weird, fake, populous thing where he claims that the Republican Party is going to be the party of working people. But he goes against absolutely
everything that we need. And so for me, we know what I want to talk about here, and what Jake is bringing up to is that like this whole his weird manhood stick, it's just getting creepy, and it's all about his own power. What he wants to do is tell people want to do what to do. He doesn't want to give us the tools to do things on our own. And that's what we need, is what people
in Missouri want. And so for me, you know, it's a real opportunity kind of out here on the front lines in the fight for democracy to make a stand, to go against a guy who's faking it and you know, win one for the good guys.
That is an incredible, incredible line. He also doesn't live in Missouri, right.
I'm not going to judge any of this stuff. There's lots of things out there people can look up what they want to look up. For me, like, the real critical part of this is really just hitting I mean, maybe that's part of the fakeness, but the fakeness of the things he says versus the things he does right. And so for me, I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Jeff City, Missouri. My family went bagbru
for medical bills. We really struggled. And the way we made it is because in that neighborhood, people with no more money than we had asked the plate for us. Down at church, you know, they brought more tunic cast role by the house than we could eat. And we really were able to take care of each other. Everyone
there did that. Everyone in Missouri does that. And when we don't have politicians like Josh Holly a dividing us is many ways as they can and be defunding us by taking away our opportunities to have meaningful work, our opportunities to get a good wage, our opportunities to get over time, and a bunch of other things like we can take care of ourselves and we do a good
job of it. And so for me, this is about empowering everyday people, investing in everybody every day people who make this country strong, and going against his passions, which is just like you know, in order to be a man, you have to be more like me, which in itself is just crazy.
Right Yeah, Jake Congressman, I can cross. Sorry, I'm always want to stay fancy. I want to ask you you both are veterans, can you talk to me about that.
One of the defining things that you learn in officer candidate school and basic officer course and the entire Marine Corps training pipeline is leadership by example first and foremost.
So don't tell people what to do.
Act in the manner that you wish other people would know you for and whatem you. And again we see with Senator Holly, you know, exemplified by January sixth, but doubled down every day thereafter is he puts forward this fake populist fervor, but acts totally differently in how he actually votes and what he actually stands for. And so
just really not leadership by example at all. And then the other thing you learn is officer z E last, which is to say that it's only after every member of the platoon has what they need food supplies, R and R that an officer should see to their own needs or comforts. And Washington could use a lot more of that mentality, frankly overall, but certainly we need it from people in positions like a senator from Missouri. I mean, we've seen Holly vote against affordable care acts, vote against
better pay and overtime benefits for workers in Missouri. We've seen him vote against the infrastructure and high tech manufacturing bills that have doubled down on this country's economic strengths and infrastructure. He just is not taking care and looking out for the everyday American. He's looking out for himself and his own political ambitions.
Yeah, Lucas, will you explain to us just a little bit about how being a veteran affects your running for office and your governing?
Well, yeah, I mean a lot, is what Jake just said. Right, you're leading for other people, and so for me. You know, the whole reason that I joined the Marine Corps to begin with is because when we were kids, this guy who ran our parish church kitchen. Actually it's probably like my little sister and I. We would volunteer at the at the like soup kitchen nights, and he'd ask everybody always like, Hey, what do you guys? What chores do you want to do? You know, do you want to
set the table? Do you want to greet people? Do you want to clear plates? What do you want to do? And so my little sister and I were we always like, oh, oh ow, we want to do the dishes we want to do the dishes. And I was always like it was wrong with these kids, like who want to do the dishes?
That's crazy? And finally he figured it out that we didn't have a.
Dish washing machine at our house, and with a family of six, like, that's a real amount of toil you're doing every night. They had dishwashers at the Paris and so we thought we were scamming him, right, because we just threw the place in there and locked away, like, ell, such did it right? He chores here, and so I'll figure that out. And one day, several years later, when he renovated at his house, the dishwasher out.
He put it into his big.
Blue picked up frot.
He brought it over our house and had it installed for us. Thing about al was he was a marine officer in Vietnam. He learned, you know, selfless care, taking care of others, not asking for anything in return in the Marine Corps. And so you know, I joined because I wanted to be like him. My thirteen years, i'd live up to the standard he helped. And it's like Jake said, we need more members of Congress who are there to invest in other people, like all invested in us.
He saved us forty five minutes of hard labor every single night. Right that the way we could focus on school or whatever else like these are the types of small investments that we can also make it a big scale, and then people like Josh Holly again, they are not willing to make He never learned real leadership. His Manhood book is about telling people what to do. It's not
about showing them. It's not about empowering them, and it's not about giving folks the resources to live their lives in a manner where we can all take care of each other.
Mollie.
It's also worth noting what is right beneath the surface of Senator Holly's definition of manhood, and at times actually has been made explicit, which is that he'd used it a zero sum calculation. With the empowerment of women in this country, he basically thinks that every step forward that women take in terms of empowerment in the workplace, in control over their own bodies, in their ability to have more agency in our economy and society, some of the
real achievements of the last fifty years. His worldview is that every step forward is necessarily a step backwards for men, and that is a dangerous worldview because his definition of manhood is saying, we've got to roll back the clock for women in this country. And that's not just rhetoric. As we've seen over the last several years. We've got a Supreme Court that, especially if empowered by the Senate, wants to start doing that.
Yeah. One of the things that I think is so interesting about these Trumpers is that they're actually like less progressive than the United States military, which I think is interesting. You know, I'm sure you guys talk about this all the time. There's a lot of these Trump Republicans attack the military for things like, you know, just being sort of you know, if you're a woman and you work hard in the military, you sort of have the same experiences. I mean, you largely are able to get the same
kind of promotions that the men are. And I think that some of that kind of equality is really infuriating to the Magro Republicans.
Well, Molly, it's actually it's become even more dangerous than that. We've seen Senator Tuberville of Alabama, who is cut from the same cloth as Senator Holly. He is with holding up through senatorial privilege hundreds of senior military promotions in the Indo Pacific because he's having a tantrum over the
military's abortion policy. And this is unprecedented. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, not exactly a paragon of progressive values, has said it's inappropriate and it's directly threatening national security at a time in the United States needs to stand tall, both in terms of military posture and in planning an organizational competence in the Indo Pacific against the CCP and their designs on the Taiwan Straight and the South China Sea.
We've got one senator from Alabama who's so mad that women have control over their own reproductive decisions that he is threatening our entire national security. That is the direction that the MAGA wing of the Senate GOP wants to take in terms of politicizing the military. And you can bet that Senator Holly will be an enthusiastic participant in that.
I mean, he's.
Already, for example, opposed aid to Ukraine, opposed Finland Sweden joining NATO. I mean, these are slam dunk issues in the Senate Conference, the Senate GOP conference, and yet out of his desire to be contrarying and build his own political ambitions up. He really has run against the grain of core American security priorities.
So tell Us Lucas one of the things I'm always interested in, And we just had Colin on this podcast. We were talking about how actually Ted Cruz only kept his seat by three points. So tell Us Lucas how you can win in a red state which did have a Democratic senator pretty recently.
Right, I mean, we actually had all Democrats, almost all Democrats state wides up through twenty seventeen. We lost our last one this year. Actually she didn't run again for the state order And yeah, I mean it's a state where people are willing to go both ways. I mean, when you look at some of the ballot measures we've passed lately, people are shocked. Right, Like Missouri overturns the anti union right to work at ballot initiatives sixty eight
percent to thirty two percent. Holly was on the wrong side of that. We increased our minimum wage five dollars over the federal level. We passed a legalization of first medical and then recreational Milrijuana. We expanded medicaid again. All of these things over the politicians. And so while we have a very like progressive or even populous streak, which is what ally take the crime to happen into, we also got people that are willing to vote the opposite
way on politicians. Again, I talked about people who were all recently elected. But even in twenty sixteen, the last time we had a Senate race with the presidential race here in Missouri, Chasing Candor came within three points of getting Roy Blind when Donald Trump here won by seventeen points. And so it's stay where people will vote based on the person. And I say, right now, Holly's way less popular than Roy Blunt was at the time. Jason Candor
was an Afghanistan veteran. You know, I'm a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. So we're kind of similar in many ways. And we just have a situation where you have a very unpopular guy who can't raise money.
I mean, you know, Jake was talking.
About how these guys will do all these things against American interests in order to be conveying and get campaign capital. And it's true, like in the publicing campaigns right now, there's only two sources of capital, right it's corporate money or it's culture war capital. And so Josh Holly, he's already tossed away the corporate money because on January sixth,
they decided to flee him. That's how he originally got in, and now he's leaning in on the cultural side, but he's doing it in just such like a creepy way, with like this manhood book and everything else that actually just turns people off. That's why he's unpopular. So, oh, we got a real exciting opportunity that I'm I'm decited to roll all the way to.
Yet, tell us a little bit about your friendship, because this is pretty interesting.
First and foremost Marines just always watch out for one another, and we connected Lucas and I because for as long as I've been in Congress, and especially since January sixth, I've seen Senator Holly as emblematic of so much of what's wrong in this town and have been eager for a candidate of the quality of Lucas, who's got the work ethic, who's got the biography, got the strategy to unseat this guy and actually bring authentic, principled representation for the great site of Missouri.
Thanks Jake, yeah, we almost thank you card. Thanks Josh Holly for sucking so much, bringing us together and making this seat so imminently winnable.
Great guy.
Well, I do really hope that this works out for you, guys, and I do hope you'll take this buddy comedy on the road because it's much needed for this moment.
Well, me too.
You know, Jake just had a baby though, so we gotta see how that plays out.
Congratulations, my king, thank you. Yeah, my leash is pretty short these days.
I think my wife's tolerance for a.
Road show with callavancing around the country is a little well, I just.
Want to get back to this seat for one more second. Lucas, what do you need right now?
So right now we're obviously doing a big and publicity push around the campaign around Holly's book and all the terrible.
Things he's doing.
So if people would follow us on Twitter, it's Lucas Koont's m so Lucas ay you n ce m o. You can see what we're up to, you kind of follow what we're tracking. We always need donations. You can give those at lucascoons dot com. We actually raised three times from donations. What Holly did last quarter. Again, the guy he's run out of that sort of capital and he's just banking on culture capital.
So we're gonna have a real opportunity to go after him there.
And just otherwise, if Missouri spread the word, if you know anybody in Missouri, spread the word. There's a real grassroots component of this campaign that we want to make sure we get out there.
And you're going to every district.
Done. Oh, we're in every small town.
I'll tell you what. We went to Freeberg the other day a year and a half before the election, and there's a town of four hundred people, and one hundred folks came out to the American Legion there to see us.
So we're going everywhere. We're getting there and we're getting good crowd.
It's nice, fantastic. Well, good luck to you and thanks. I hope you both will come back of course.
Mollie, thanks take care.
Hi. It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible Designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise only
at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Sam Brody is a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast. Welcome to Fastolick, Sam Brody.
Thank you so much for having me.
You are a fan favorite. I am very excited you are in the halls of Congress. It's all happening. How many people has Marjorie Taylor Green tried to impeach this week?
There's how many people she's actually tried to impeach, and then how many people she said she's going to impeach? So I started losing count at like three or four.
She filed articles of impeachment today against Biden, Now that's.
Right, she did, and it was all centered on immigration and the border. So maybe she's saving some more impeachment articles they have to do with Unterbiden's laptop or things of that nature. But it was surprisingly, it was surprisingly targeted. When I was looking those over this morning.
Yeah, incredible stuff. You are in Congress. You are there in the halls of power, the venerable, whatever. Just tell me what's going on there.
Oh, there's a lot that's going on right now in Congress. It's a pretty busy time. You have like these big picture, extremely important, like macro level things that are happening, namely avoiding a catastrophic default on the US federal debt.
I've heard about that.
You may have seen this in the nearest and then you have these just like insane little Grandma's playing out. And by that I'm talking about you know, one particular freshman congressman from New York who you're stairs may be familiar with.
Oh, tell me more about the congressman from Nassau County one. And we don't even really know that that's his real name, George Santos.
We don't actually know. I mean, I don't take anything for granted at this point. And these things inter sect too, because George Santos is a key swing vote for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which continues to be which continues to be startup hilarious. Right, So, yesterday Democrats tried something interesting, which was they put forward what's called a privileged resolution to expel George Santo from Congress, and a privilege resolution is a sort of rare tool in that it actually forces action.
You can't just file it and people can ignore it and forget it. It has to be addressed in one way or the other. And so Democrats kind of up the ante with that with obviously George Hittos being indicted on criminal charges, and so what Republicans did was instead of kind of just taking it as an up or down vote, they reframed it as a as emotion to refer the matter of Santos's expulsion to the House Ethics Committee.
So Republicans, like a lot of them, don't want Satos to be there, but they don't want to have to take this vote. And importantly, Kevin McCarthy come and needs his vote for the time being. And so yesterday all Republicans did vote to refer the matter to House Ethics, which is famous for taking an extremely long time to literally do anything.
And I want to point out the statistics on House Ethics. Have they ever found anyone guilty?
Ever? They actually have, They have what penalties on members in the past, but usually after very very very long investigations.
Right, so the chances that Santos would be censured before his term was up, seems unlikely.
There's an existing precedent that that members have woing ty, which is that Congress has not expelled a member until their criminal proceedings were basically until they were convicted guilty, and so they're holding to that. President though I think there's plenty of people who'd argue that asked examples, you know they're bad. Obviously it's members who wrote the law. But insider trading, okay, that's not good. This use of campaign funds, that's not good. Well, Santo's I mean, you
don't even know where to begin. And there's people who make a point that it's it's actively, actively bad and dangerous to have this guy in Congress, and so therefore past precedent should not apply. Maybe Republicans didn't find that persuasive, but there's a lot of interest in upholding the precedent and then also ensuring that they don't often do anything about this right right now. So so DJ is going
to pursue it's it's thing. But interestingly, how Ethics has said that they're not going to pause their investigation on Sanatos while DJ is acting, which is unusual. So I don't know what that'll mean, but you know, there could be more that House Ethics is looking into that maybe is outside the scope of DJ He could be facing some problems. I think we can definitively say that.
That's a really sad story. And also whatever I mean, he certainly has some kind of legal you know, exposure for all his criming. But the thing that makes me so bummed out is how a Democrat lost this seat.
It's pretty baffling when you look at the history of that scene, what the dynamics were, and it was the story really across sort of New York, right, New York State. Yeah, that wasn't even the most product leading seat that a Republican won in twenty twenty two. And you know, I think about it all the time. I mean, this guy was sort of hiding in plain sight and the kind of lies that heats. Bold were just not accustomed to
that level of insane fabrication. Usually, you know, obviously, when somebody says I worked here, here's where I went to school, you know, you want to it should be checked out. But it's just so rare to see the level of fabrication. And then by the time it was caught. It was it was too late.
You know.
I think what's interesting is like what Santos's endgame really is. You know, He's continuing to draw a salary. We know this is important to him, given that he filed for unemployment while actually having a job, or that's he's allegedly vlaw by doing that.
He had signed onto a bell two. That was, yeah, can you tell us explain that, because that's a fascinating wrinkle.
It's one of the many just sort of like you can't make it up. Ironies to Santos's sort of brief life in Congress. But when Republicans were negotiating and passing this, you know, their version of the Duck ceiling spending bill, George Santos was the loudest voice in that entire group pushing for work requirements for you know, federal benefits to be stricter. He was like, no, we got to do you know, you got to work at these thirty hours a week to get this, like this is my red line.
And people are like, all right, George Santos, okay. And then he was a lead sponsor of legislation that would you know, the goal of the legislation was to crack down on people who had abused pandemic unemployment benefits. So fast forward, George Santos is literally indicted functuately using pandemic unemployment benefits as he sponsored this legislation to crave down on people like him, and then you know it puts his whole work requirements bush in a totally different date.
The reason is the question like what the hell is this guy doing and what is his end game? And I've looked at like what he's done. He's tried to be kind of maga, but he's also tried to be like this kind of pro labor union New York sort
of swing Republican. He can't really decide like what his tribe is, and so he's sort of just thrown spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks and to change the subject from this sort of endless you know, this endless pariadi of scanals and out legal action that he faces.
One of the things that somebody said about Santos a journalist who is covering the house, and I'm curious if this tracks is what you've seen, is that when he got to the house, he was very and this is something I've seen in the reporting about him. He was
quite quiet, a little bit nervous, pretty uncomfortable. And then he sort of discovered that the Maga Caucus is you know, cannot be shamed, is unshamable, has that same kind of trumpy inability to be held responsible for things they do, and he joined with those guys.
Yeah, exactly, and he quickly found that crew. I mean, the first few days he's sort of sitting by himself during the speaker about and it was like on TV for everyone to see him sort of sitting alone at
the lunch table. But then you know, he gravitated towards the people in the Maga caccaus, you know, many of whom have faced their own sort of accusations of the engultraveils, and he kind of settled into these folks and yeah, you know, it's been interesting to watch Santo's even adopt, you know, the Trumpean language, you know, tweeting witch hunt in response, as you know, if he thinks grabs on target.
Who knows that the Republican Party is kind of so bulable to think that if you just say witch hunt whenever you're keys that are doing anything bad that you know you're you're gonna be fine, But I'm waited to bet that Versantos is probably not held in the esteem in the Republican Party that Donald Trump is. And you know, it's been interesting to watch Santos' I think you're starting to see Republicans like really really lose their patience with
him in the building. I think at first he was sort of this like distracting amusement, and now he's being charged with serious crimes. Democrats are needling them over it, and like I think this week there was a palpable sense of exasperation, like this guy just needs a fucking resign, Like, right, what is he going to get by by being here?
Because no matter which way you slice it, he's not long that for that building, whether he's you know, convicted, or whether he's going to be defeated in a primary election next year. I mean, there's just no good ending to this for him, and so maybe he's just trying to write it out like his pateent, right, you know, until the end comes.
The fundamental problem Republicans have, right, is that they're saying that Trump can do stuff like this because he's popular, and Santos can't because he just doesn't come from a red enough district. I mean, that's the moral problem these Republicans have.
Santo's is famous because like literally because of all the crazy stuff that he's done. You know, this is his intire reputation at this point, and I think when it gets there, the idea that this is like some sort of witch hunting is like, I don't know who sees that tweeting those, Yeah, they're really how to get this guy. I mean, like, you know, this is the same week that he needed guilty and I guess at Brazilian court to stuff he'd been charged with there.
So I don't want to beat a dead horser. But it's not so different than Trump. I mean, like Eugene is the standout and he's got twenty six allegations. I mean, the guy has you know, he led an insurrection. I mean, you know where there's smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke and it's burning, there's fire.
Yeah, And I think there is a fundamental similarity. And like what did Trump sort of show other politicians that if you just deny, obstruct, deflect, change the subject, attack, when these things happen, you'll make it through. And I think that is a really important lesson, and you've seen politicians adapt to that and take that lesson. But people like George Santos have a shorter in rental day to get away with that than a Donald Trump.
Then a Donald Trump.
And also just I mean the staggering, the staggering array of stock that George Santos has piled up that you just really can make up.
So talk to me about the discharge petition Biden has to negotiate with probably the dumbest speaker of the House's ever had. I'm just going to say that for me because I'm on the opinion side, so I can say stuff like that. The Republicans have said, like if you use the fourteenth Amendment, will you do something horrible to you? But there is also this tool of the discharge petition. Tell us about the discharge petition.
It's another one of those like congressional mechanisms that can force something to get to the floor whether the majority leadership wants it to or not. And it's been used various times in the past, sometimes even by members of the majority party. Since really the beginning of the Republican majority in the House, people have been talking about using a discharge or petition. It requires a certain number of signatures, and then it starts this process to force a bill
to the floor. There is talk about using that to get a debt ceiling extension to the floor, thinking that, you know, Republicans were not going to be able to get their act together and that there would be this springmanship and that there would need to be some kind of offering to that. So Democrats this week started that process of the discharge petition, thinking was, you need majority
in the House to do it. So if every Democrat joined with like six Republicans, five republicans, rights, right, that they could do it. Here's the problem is the way this thing works, like the actual like dotting the eyes, crossing the t's of this takes a very long time. And so if they had wanted to really have this as a live option, they would have had to do it months ago, because like, right now.
Why does it take so long?
Oh gosh, it's like I don't think it's like it just takes a long time.
Yeah, it needs to go to different members needs well, they.
Need to get the signature is a and then like there's some like kind of parliamentary stuff that I don't even like quite fully understand. I just know that, like it just takes time. There's like no way you can aass track it, you know, as folks know, it's forecast that sometime in June the Treasury's going to hit the actual hard borrowing commit at which point there would be there would be a default if if it's not extended. So they don't have time to do this right now.
So could this become relevant if say the two sides agree to like a short term extension, say give it another month, right, However, like, could it become relevant? It's it's possible. But I think the other really relevant thing is that I've been surprised by how unified Republicans have been so far behind McCarthy from kind of both his like you know, center right flight to like the far right flank. They are sort of giving him room to
do this. And I don't think that any Republican would sign on to the discharge right now, because that would be really a shot across about a McCarthy basically saying we would trust you to get this done, you're risking default. We're going to go with the Democrats and get this thing on the floor. I don't think any of them are inclined to do that, right now.
Do you think that McCarthy is going to allow a default?
That's right? You asked this, I was, I was asking Republican members yesterday. You might have caught Donald Trump's comment at this hand on Hall that we could just do a little default, you know.
Right, yes, I did, you just do a little bit of that. Why should he run the country any different than he runs his business?
Right, right, just have a little default, it's fine. And every Republican will tell you, like, no, like, that's not how this works. We don't want a default. Yeah, as folks, you know, Democrats will point out, like, the only reason they're negotiating stance is credible? Is it because people have to believe that, like they would default if they didn't get what they wanted, And so McCarthy is walking that line.
The thing that's so important here is Democrats are playing ball in a way that I think, frankly, is surprising even to some of the party. Biden started by saying we're not going to negotiate at all. Then he said we're not going to negotiate on the debt limit, but we'll negotiate on the budget. Two different things, right, now he's saying, oh, well, we're just talking about the budget while this deep Bault crisis is happening. You know, just
look past that. We're still just negotiating about the budget.
You know.
I think the fourteenth Amendment stuff is an expression really a frustration among Democrats that Biden has really kind of embraced the mantle of negotiating.
Right publicans would like to tank the economy so that they can get their guy in in twenty four. I mean, it's hard to imagine that these people are good phase negotiators. Again, look, the fourteenth Amendment, there could really be problems with that, right, I mean, if it ends up kicked up to the Supreme Court. I mean it's hard to imagine a world where the Supreme Court does something that's not incompletely insane.
I think that's yeah, it's untry to tear. I do think that McCarthy and certainly like McConnell, at the end of the day, I think in their heart of parts who are like, yeah, we shouldn't have a default, I do think unlike in past fights like this, I do think there is a segment of the Republican Party that really doesn't care and I need to forget about the you know, the political aspect of this, or whether this hurts Biden. I think Trump honestly complicated things for himself.
Because of a default does happen, he'll have been seen as cheering all default and helping me get happened. So let's set that aside there.
I don't think he gets held responsible for the things he does by his base.
I think that's right too. But there are some Republicans who genuinely believe that a default would be better than not cutting spending dramatically.
But they are morons.
I mean, I think that's going to be the dynamic that defines this whole thing, because McCarthy will come back, say they strike some deal with Biden, and he's going to come back to his members, who are some of them under the illusion that they're just going to like both basically on the bill that they passed on a party line, right, and he's going to take a deal of them, and they're gonna hate it.
Yeah. I Mean, that's what I don't understand is even if you get McCarthy to agree, there's no evidence that McCarthy really has power over this caucus. I mean, remember how many votes he had to go through to be speaker.
Yeah, that's right. And as part of that vote, they gained the power. Are the members gained the power to force him out if a few of them wanted to have the vote?
I have you saw that? There are sort of blue dog Dems who've said that if he brings a vote, they will make sure to keep him as speaker.
Yeah, that's right. They're trying to say, no, look you, if you do the right thing here, we'll back you up. I still think he gets very tricky, and when which comes to shove, is that actually going to be what happens? I mean, the conventional wisdom has been, you know, whatevers this of this debt limit thing, it's probably gonna end
McCarthy's speakership. I don't know, but I'm certainly again, I'm more surprised at how much room his party has has seemed to give him in this, just considering, you know, how bad the start of his speakership was. I think they're giving him some room. Now, what will that translate when they're actually talking about a specific deal. I'm not so sure.
Yeah, I'm not either. It really has just continually been a shit show.
It has been a shitow. And I think back a lot to that week in January where it took them so long to have McCarthy and you still let your people talk about how much that kind of set back the business of the Republican majority, which is something that at the time they strenuously denied that this was going to do anything. But I think any sensible person would say, you know, this probably will have some cutters can be
back there. Yeah, and that's what's happened. But look, I mean, he passed you know, people might say, oh, well he passed the bill. It's just like Republicans like, you know whatever, that's not that hard. It actually was incredibly hard. I don't think people expected him to do that, and so that really, I mean, he's not made it easy for Biden.
I think be the White House might have thought that this was going to be easier for them, and they could have stuck to their guns and saying, look, you know, we're not going to negotiate with you guys over this. We're not going to reward hostage taking. You're starting to see in the last week some discontent bubble from Democrats. We feel that Biden is actually, in fact rewarding hostage taking by by negotiating from Garcia.
Sam Brody, we've gone way over time. As always, I appreciate you, Thank you so much for joining us.
Always. I'd be doing anytime, no moment.
Jesse Cannon, my John Fast.
You know, most people don't know most amendments, and the fourteenth one. You know, I feel like we've only been recently hearing about this. What do you see in here?
Look, the fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution as part of the end of slavery and the end of the Civil War. But in it there is a line that says that the United States honors its debts, which means that runs completely contrary to the idea of a debt sealing limit, where the United States decides it's not going to pay its debts because Republicans don't want to.
So today we had Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Peter Welsh, John Fetterman, and a couple of others, and they have put together a sort of suggestion that the Biden administration should go along with the fourteenth Amendment. Now, it would be really complicated for them to do the fourteenth Amendment, and ultimately it would probably get kicked up to the Supreme Court. This Supreme Court, as we know, tends to
run very, very, very trumpy. I don't love the idea of being dependent on this Supreme Court to keep us out of default. That said, I think that the fourteenth Amendment is a good way to try to force Kevin McCarthy's hand, and so I think it's smart that these Democrats are doing it, and so they are not our moment of fuckery. But Kevin McCarthy, one of the stupidest Speakers of the House ever, does get our moment of fuckery.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.