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 Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly says Trump's quote unquote, scared shitless. We have a fantastic show today, The Daily Beasts Can Fight. Our newsletter author Lachlan Cartwright stops by to tell us about the shakeups at CNN and the media's coverage of Trump. Then we'll talk to The Washington Post Paul Kine about the
chaos inside the GOP's congressional class. But first we have the one, the only, the author of Too Much and Never Enough, The Mary Trump Shows, Mary Trump, So welcome back to Fast Politics. Mary Trump, Mary Trump.
Maulli jun Fast, Malli Junk Fast.
We're at this moment in the state of our nation and the state of our lives with Donald Trump, where I feel like it's so bad I have to laugh.
Yeah, yeah, see I witness me laughing right now. What else are you gonna do?
Right?
I mean, you have to laugh because otherwise you'll cry.
Yeah, it's very difficult to get a little bit of space from things to the extent that that's possible. And then to be dragged back in by this bizarre spectacle and another stark reminder about how badly the mainstream media fails us time after time, and also to be reminded
that people really don't get it. I mean, there are people whose opinions I respect and whose views I value going out there talking about how we have to bend over backwards to treat Donald as innocent before proven guilty and make sure that he is treated like any other person in his position, as if there ever has been. But I mean that suggests that he's not being treated fairly, or rather that there is this double standard and he's
suffering at the hands of that double standard. But Molly, I mean, Jesus Christ, has anybody been treated better or lescessarily in this sense that it always redounds to his benefit. He left there a freeman able to do whatever he wants. You and I would be in prison for the rest of our lives pending trial.
Right.
I mean, that is the incredible thing about trump Ism is that Trump has somehow convinced and again, like I feel like the top line here is democracy dies and stupid. Right, This guy reality television host who paints himself orange has convinced the entire Republican Party, including the grown ups, quote unquote, that somehow him getting in trouble for refusing to return classified documents and telling.
Lawyers to lie about it and.
Showing these classified documents to other people is somehow convinced them that this is in some way an.
Affront to him.
Yeah, there's that for sure, and the fact that none of the several dozen now other candidates for the Republican nomination don't seem to be able to find a way to use his vast criminality and treason his behavior against him.
But you know, again, there's also on the left a reluctance to be very clear about what's going on here. And this is frustrating for lay people like me because I don't have to worry about the niceties of the legal system.
We know he's guilty, not only because we saw it with our own eyes and hurt it with our own ears. The evidence has been unfolding in front of us for over two years now, and it's just maddening how the emphasis seems to be on just making sure everything's fair for dom.
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Yeah, if you were just to look at the case just the documents case, right, Mike Pence had accident. Let's just say they accidentally took home. You know, Mike Penn's excellently took documents. Joe Biden accidentally took documents, they returned them.
Period paragraph.
Donald Trump again took many, many boxes.
Maybe there was an accident, Okay, I mean I a very hard time believing that from the fact that he then told Mark Meadows, biographer, right, but that was who he was talking to. He told someone, I have all these secret documents. I could have declassified them, but now I'm not. Look there secret secret you know, Russell paper. I mean, you know what, these are crimes. They're not just crimes because Donald Trump is very popular.
No, no, And again, when has this man ever faced the consequences of his actions. Never, There's always somebody there to bail them out. So it's almost as if that aura of invincibility means to many people that he should always be able to crime with no consequences. It's completely insane. And also what gets left out of the conversation, and
this is the part I just do not understand. There's a very real possibility that American allies or American people in the Secret Service were had their lives endangered.
By his actions, right exactly.
And you know we're talking we're not just talking about the stubborn refusal to follow the rules, right because he doesn't think the rules apply to him.
We're not just talking about that.
And by the way, that's enough, that's serious enough for him to be spending decades in prison. We're talking about treason of the highest level here and the undermining of
American national security which is ongoing. So that the idea that this is all about spectacle and making sure that you know, cameras have to be there to see when he leaves the driveway and when he pulls up and what he gets out of the car, right right, right, It just makes it like it's it's flashbacks to the empty podiums and the tarmacs Lane's idling on tarmacs in twenty sixteen.
But it's worse because there's so much more at stake now.
Right, I mean, this is this is the thing that I'm struck by, is that we here is a man who has won the attention economy, right, he has dominated you know what he did in twenty fifteen was he got all the media and actually I read a statistic that he had, you know, some billion dollar, hundreds of millions of dollars in free media, right that he had somehow he had gotten so much free media from his Howard Sterns sort of shock jockey kind of stuff that
he had sort of won on that right. And as you watch the car to the tarmac, the tarmac to the jet, the jet to that, I mean, nobody needs to see this and it is just helping the Donald Trump brand yet.
One, because you know, they think that just his very existence is more important than anything else. That was one of the signs in twenty sixteen that we were heading for trouble. There's Hillary Clinton giving a very substantive, very important policy speech and nobody showed it because they were waiting for Donald to come and I don't know, sell
bottled water or something. So it is quite something. Even worse though, we have them cutting from their analysis to his lawyer, who's not even a lawyer on this case, speaking to reporters and lying through her teeth about everything. Alena Haba, Elena Habba. You know, up until Donald tired her was operating out of a strip mall somewhere in New Jersey. No context, no analysis of all everything she
lied about. I mean, just say, President Biden hates America, and if you if you hate Donald Trump, you hate America because the two have become equated.
In these people's minds.
And then you've got people, even people like Rachel Matto saying, you know, we need to kind of deal with Donald and you know, just will will drop their charges as long as he doesn't run or something in white universe?
Is that justice? Right?
Well?
And also the other thing is that none there's no mechanism for that. I mean, the thing that I'm so struck by is that what has happened is we've never had someone who is so good at criming that, you know, and so correct. You know, we always had some you know, we've always had a president or someone you know where they've you know where they've sort of been Abraham not Abraham Lincoln, but George Washington ask you know, I'm going to take the high road. Even Nixon, you know, and
the guy is a and all. Even Nixon is like, I guess it's time to go, right. But we have someone here who's like his thing as he gets away with it, and so he has decided he's going to get away with it.
I think what's interesting.
As you look at the is I mean, there's just no precedence for any of this, right, We're at state indictments, federal indictments.
There's more state indictments coming.
I mean, there's never been a situation where you have like a real legal world and then you have this guy who's.
Like fuck you.
Yeah, and it shows you how danger it is not to hold people accountable in real time instead of you know, waiting for the decades of criming finally maybe potentially to catch up with him. One of the things that I've always found deeply worrisome is that because it takes so long when they say justice Guyd's slow.
But fine, I think we need a new you know, justice gruns.
I don't know, infinitesimly and maybe not so fine after all that all of these cases in different venues are happening now at around the same time. Also, thanks very much for the fact that Merrick Garland did nothing, nothing for over a year, which is unforgivable.
So I could see if you're so.
Inclined to be paranoid and to think that Donald Trump really is somebody who's unfairly targeted.
I can see where it might seem like that.
Because so many people coming after him at the same time, because he's committed so many crimes, But again, it seems so unlikely, Like, how could that be possible? How could somebody possibly get away with all of that for so long? And it's only now when he's running again.
I don't know, man.
You know, for those of us who who prefer reality, the problem is that it's so obvious that he's guilty, especially in Georgia and in this document's case, Like, how can you like, why does it take so long? The evidence has already been presented, and its evidence in his own words, right exactly.
I do think like one of the things when we look back on, like how American democracy barely survived.
That's what my That's going to be my that's my.
Top line, because I don't want it to die. But you know, when we look back on this time, we're going to you know, I think one of the things we're going to say is that, like if Merrick Garland had moved a little faster than you know, like he I mean, you we all saw in real time last year when Trump decided to run because he knew it would hurt their chances of being able to prosecute him.
I mean, that was it.
That was We saw that happen in real time.
And now you know he's up there and Republicans are saying they're trying to keep him from running for president.
There's not a.
Republican in the world who really believes that, except maybe Marjorie Taylor Green.
Oh she doesn't, right.
Bobert, And your your your favorite former super person in Congress who we go over, and yeah, maybe a couple of others like ghosts are but they don't believe any of it. And I think that's this cynicism of all.
This is another thing that is so debilitating. Donald's breathtaking cynicism of literally running for the highest office in the land, not because he gives a shit about America and not because he cares about the Constitution, which he's never read, but because he wants to stay out of jail and it's easier to grift from the oval office. Almost every single elective Republican having made the political calculation that right now they're stuck with him, So what are you going to do?
Every single one.
Of them, even though I mean maybe two people have spoken out against him. The rest are either completely in his corner or like McConnell, are saying nothing.
They'll all vote for him if he gets the nomination.
I mean, that's just beyond that shoe serves to legitimize him in the minds of many, many millions of people, which has always been one of the most dangerous things, right right.
Right, No, I mean, it's just I mean, I guess I know how we got here, you know, all.
The parties here.
I feel like, and you have this psychological I've talked about this when I've had you on the podcast before, but I think it's really important you have this psychological perspective of like what it's like to live with a person who has the sort of weird pathologies that your uncle has.
How does this play?
Now?
If you're going to game it out, you don't have to be right, But just like, psychologically.
He keeps going. I mean, my sense is he never quits.
Oh no, no, no, no, he can't because look, for two reasons. One is because he literally believes, and he may not be wrong, that his future freedom depends on getting into the White House.
So there's that. The other thing, and we see this very clearly in the documents case is he can't admit he's wrong.
Course correcting mature people understand it as taking an information processing it understanding that you need to go in a different direction.
It doesn't mean, oh my god, I was wrong and I have to admit I was wrong and now to do something else. But that's Donald's perspective.
If I course correct, then I have to admit I'm wrong, and I can never be wrong. So he's on this path and the only thing that takes him off of the path is some external force, which remains to be seen, because right now it doesn't look like any of these cases, any of them, will interfere with his ability to run for office, which is insanity.
The one thing that does surprise me.
It's very difficult to be reminded repeatedly that our system is in place to protect those who want to destroy it.
Like for whom is this justice? I don't even know.
And that's the other thing that gets lost here. This is a crime against the people of the United States. It's not like he did something wrong and it was a crime against the White House or whatever, right right exactly, you know, this is a guy with serious mental illness. He's got serious psychiatric disorders, and they're untreated. Any untreated illness, no matter what it is, worse since over time.
Right, that's a really good point.
Yeah, And we see instances of that, like he has literally no impulse control anymore. He used to be able to go into a deposition and you know, just say I don't know, don't remember, no I and just play it that way. Now he just can't shut up. And he as we saw in the fabulous CNN town hall and as we saw at Bedminster the other night, he's really good at continuing to incriminate.
Himself, really good.
Yeah, but you know he's not decompensating in a way that renders him in totally incapable of continuing. And I think again that's because the guy's always been institutionalized. He's always had people around him, you know, doing everything for him. He has so much stolen money that you know, he can hire people, he doesn't have to feed himself, he doesn't have to buy lowes for himself, he doesn't have to lift a finger to do the rest of the things all of us have to do in order to
survive in this world. And I think that's partially what kind of holds him together better than he would be holding up if he had to live.
A life in the real world. Right, That's what I think too.
I just think that this is how it's going to go now, and there's now recourse, and I think it seems like that George Conway is right that eventually he just destroys the Republican Party and not the rest.
Of us, well exactly.
I mean, if his destruction could be limited to a Republican Party, that's great, but there's no guarantee of that, because, as you know as well as anybody, the Republican Party is on a mission to make sure that they don't have to win anymore in order to get their person in the White House.
Right, And that is ultimately why.
We should all be very very worried.
Mary Trump, please come back soon.
Absolutely Well, it's going to be a long journey and we definitely need to be sticking together, that's for sure.
Lockland Cartwright is an editor at large of The Daily Beast and author of the newsletter Confider.
Welcome to Fast Politics, lock and Cartwright.
Good night, Good to be emli So Locklan.
You write one of the absolutely best.
Media newsletters in all of media World and you get all the scoops, and your newsletter is called Confider and your tagline.
Is everyone loves it until they're in it. And it's free and you can subscribe on the dailybase dot com Confider.
So let's talk about what's happening right now. Last week was a huge week for CNN, and I'm hoping you could talk to us about what is.
Happening on one of the most famous cable news channels.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's been a quite turbulent period for CNN. A little over a year ago, it was announced that Chrislick was being named as the CEO and chairman, replacing Jeff Zucker, who was a legendary figure and incredibly well liked by not only the talent at CNN, but by producers journalists. He was an incredibly warm figure in the newsroom and a real presence. So they went from Soccer, who was ousted over this relationship he had with Alison Goldholst,
who also worked at CNN. Then Chris Lick came into the building and almost immediately put people off by moving up to an office well above the news room, not taking a Zucker's old office, turning it into a conference room and then you know, making changes like firing Brian Stelter, so people were incredibly wary of him on the way in, but he did nothing to really you know, win the support of the rank and file, and things just kind
of got worse from there. He declared a town hall there wouldn't be layofs well actually months later that they were laos and just a series of missteps and you know, self inflected wounds which really built to the Trump town hall, which was an utter mitigated disaster. And then you know,
finding the Tim Lberto Atlantic profile. You know, that really left David Zazof, you know, the head of Wanted Discovery with with no choice but to to to resign in and Leck exited the building last week and in his place there's kind of a four person management team now David Levy and the and tallis Eric Shirling and Virginia Mosley while they go on this search for a new CEO.
But they're in no hurry to make that decision. I think they've learnt their lesson in the fact that you know, they didn't interview anyone for Zucker's position as a joke and could fighter Chris Lick is our favorite schmoozer, basically because he schmoozed his way into this gig and Zaz didn't interview anyone, there wasn't a search. He just appointed Lick and that totally blew up on him. So they will take their time. They're basically settling everything down right now.
They'll take the summer and see cast a wide net and see what emerges are in the fall.
So the crew that is in there right now too, these are really old school CNN people who really know what they're doing.
Will you talk a little bit.
I mean I feel like they sort of went you know, they had brought someone in who was not a CNN person, and now they have a real kind of safety net again.
Yeah, I mean Amy and tell us we could probably start there because my money would be on her as the red hot favorite to be named a CEO.
She's been at CNN five decades.
She's incredibly well respected, incredibly well l liked, and she was there before Zucker, she was there during Zucker, she survived under Leak, she's now steadying the ship again. And you know, different people I speak to in the building to say she's completely unflappable. She is a very cool head in what it has been quite a disruptive time. Then you've got Virginia Mosley, who's head of news gathering again, someone that is a safe pair of hands. My money
probably wouldn't be on her taking the reins. You know, she is managing the ship day to day. Eric Shirling is a well accomplished producer. And then David Levy is one of doz is lieutenants, and he's kind of really sort of more on the corporate front. But it's these four who are setting the ship. Particularly Amy is someone that people internally really like, really respect, and after the leak debacle, is someone that I you know, I'd be putting my money on as the favorite to take over a CEO.
So what happens now to like the people who didn't survive the Lift administration? Like, I mean, is there a world where any of those people you think come back or do you think it's just that they.
Are sort of collateral damage?
I mean, Chris Lick is an incredible, well accomplished show runner. Joe much success there. CBS This Morning on to Colbert. There's a couple of things here we really need to dig into. The first being is the hand of Zazz. So ye know, David Zaslov was really in the background during Lick's entire tenure, you know, giving him advice, stroke orders. Lick was carrying that out, carrying out Zazo's vision of bringing CNN more into the enter, having Republicans on, and so,
you know, I definitely think Lick can bounce back. I think it's going to take a little bit of time. But you know, he went from running and I've pointed this out and confider, he went from running shows of you know, two dozen max three dozen stuff as to running a four thousand person international news network. I mean that's a huge leap. And so you've got to really put a lot of this back at the feet of
David Zaslov. And I think the wider theme is ISAs going to back off for the next person if it is Amyan Tallis is she going to have to deal with late night, early morning phone calls from David Zaslov saying, you know, we need to put this person on, or we need to do more of this or less of this. And so I do feel for Chris Lick. I think he was in an impossible position, particularly towards the end
of this mess. I do think there's a world where he comes back in another capacity, probably running something a lot smaller than CNN, but certainly a show runner for a major show. And then you know the people around him that that took the hit, the c and NPR people who were blamed for the Tilerlberder profile, they can certainly, they can certainly bounce back. There's a world where they
come back in different different industries with different capacities. In the in the news business was you know, a mess that there were a lot of factors that contributed to it. I would say that, you know, David Zazov has a very prominent role to play and responsibility here is Azov?
Why does he control CNN?
Just explain that, can you?
Yeah? I mean he heads up you know, Want of Discovery, and when Discovery took over Warner, they obviously took on CNN. And he has kind of made this, I guess a pet project of his with I think, you know in the background, John Malone, who's on the board of Want of Discovery and has voiced his I guess displeasure at the way CNN went in all on the resistance and in on giving so much airtime to try he has kind of, I think made it a mission of his to reshape CNN. Zaslov has and has really been in
the background whispering in Lick's year. And you know, Lick has been carrying out that vision. So, you know, having more Republicans on the air, getting rid of Brian Stelta, all of these are things that Malone and Zadizlov wanted and Lick was just carrying that that vision out.
The show that Brian Stelter hosted was a show called Reliable Sources, and it was a show about the media, and it was really the only media show on television. It was around for you know, a couple of decades. Now it's gone. Do you think that there should be a show about the media on cable? You know, I mean, is there stuff to learn from this kind of like a television show about the media, And do you think not having it as problematic?
Yeah? I think coming into an election year, I think it is helpful to have a program that analyzes and criticizes the media, whether that's on cable or whether that's you know, a digital property. You know, I think there is an audience for that, you know. I think it was always very curious that one of Leck's first major moves was to fire Brian Stelter. I mean, what was the urgency in canceling that show? And what was the
need to fire that bloke? You know, you could have rehoused him as a correspondent or an on air pundit. You know, that that move, that first move, you know, and I've wrote written about this and confider that was the hand of John Malone and David Zaslov No doubt they were in leeks a year, you know, saying let's let's show Republicans and let's show people that we're making some changes here. And Brian Stelter was a sacrificial lamb.
While things do seem to be I guess a steadying a tad, the damage that's been done to this network, particularly in the ratings, is something that is going to take a long time to rebuild. MSNBC is just absolutely smashing it right now and creaming CNN. I mean, this week, particularly with the indictment, you would have thought would have been a big week for CNN. And while they're up a little bit, MSNBC is just absolutely crushing it right now.
And they even beat Fox in primetime this week, So you know, it is important to know that there's been some real reputational damage done to CNN and in the ratings particularly. This is going to take some time for them to rebuild.
So interesting talk to me about Washington Post.
Yeah, so look what this week, the publisher, Fred Ryan stepped down after what has really been a last twelve months sup period of tumults. They've lost a lot of talent, a lot of big name reporters have departed to rival outlets. They've also lost a lot of important people on their business sides, and there's just been this simmering tension that has been going on between the newsroom and Fred Ryan, the publisher. And a lot of this has to do with the positioning of what Pole coming out of the
Trump years. You look at the New York Times, they really built a subscription business, not just off the back of the great journalism they produced, but word all the cooking, acquiring the Athletic and what Pole really didn't make you any kind of similar savvy moves. So they've started to lose subscribers and added to that, the newsroom really started to lose confidence in their publisher. He made some comments at a town hall last year about about layoffs and
then wouldn't take any questions. So there has been kind of a sense that he had lost the support of the newsroom. And then Jeff Bezos, the owner of the watching the Post, made a visit back in January, I think, sensing that there was some issues playing out and also some tension between the air in chief Sully Busby and Ryan and Bezos made a visit, also met with different key staff I guess to try and read the room temperature.
And then several months later you now have the publisher who's departed, which I think people I've spoken to it what pole in the last week, are really rejoicing over hoping that this now turns a corner.
Even though he was there for a long time, right.
Yeah, I mean he's been there for you know, several years. You know, it was someone that the newsroom had just really lost confidence in. You know, he wasn't able to make any sort of clear decisions about what the direction of the Washington Post was going to take, you know, post the Trump years, and I think there were a couple of missteps there that has really cost them, you know, some key talent and inability to drive subscribers when you look at the success of the Times and the moves
they've made. You know what Pole has really been left behind?
So interesting We're now in another Trump world in like twenty fifteen all over again, because what.
A time to be alive, Molly alive.
I'm not sure we are, but it's two thousand and fifteen at nauseum.
Do you think that there.
Are lessons to be learned from that time in the way that Trump gets free media?
Yeah, I think there are lessons to be learned, and I just look around and I don't think anyone.
Has learned them.
That's depressing.
We've gone back to the future. And yeah, you look at what happened after the indictment. You know, he just turned it into a campaign rally again. And look, MSNBC and a couple of other networks cut away. But I picked up The Times straight after that. There was I think a double pay spread about it. He is a master at manipulating the press. I'm just not sure if the media has caught on to that.
It's such an impossible, impossible problem.
I mean, I think everyone, I think one's grappling with it. And I think that that's the first part that everyone is acknowledging we're going back into this, but I don't think the lesson has been fully fully learned. And you know, as we get closer to this, to going back through it, you know, I can just see a world in which, you know, we just have back to back coverage of this bloke and you know, allowing him to manipulate the press like he did, you know, the lost couple of go rounds.
Oh Locke, one cart right. Thank you for giving me a heartburn.
Please come back soon, Confider the Deadly Beast.
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Paul Kaine is the Washington Post senior congressional correspondent. Welcome to Fast Politics Paul Kane.
All right, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
We really wanted to have you because you've written about this. It seems like there's some pretty exciting and by exciting, I mean what is happening with the Republicans in Congress. I think this started with the debt ceiling compromise, so it has created this incredibly fascinating story which I'm not seeing a ton of coverage jobs, So I would love you to walk us through it.
So, yeah, you go back to the night of May thirty. First, you have this really surprising, big bipartisan vote for the debt ceiling lift, which you know comes with some spending constraints on what President Biden can do, but it you know, clears this path for two years. It gives a budget outline for two years, which should make it easier to avoid a government shut down on funding the federal agencies later this year and next year. So it was a
good moment. And you know, Speaker McCarthy, against all you know, expectations, got more than two thirds of his conference to vote for this bill.
I mean, were you surprised.
I was surprised because it was you know that the deal was sort of announced on a Saturday evening that it was going to happen, and then you know, the bill text came out on Sunday evening, and there were a couple of days there where it felt like, you know, it felt like it was an airliner that was sort
of losing altitude and momentum. And there were a couple of people here and there who announced that they were opposed, and sources of mine who were chiefs the staff or rank and file types were like, oh, my god, she's going to vote against this. That's not good. But then it just got a sort of reassuring amount of support from people who in the past would have been the Republican rebels. My friend at the New York Times, Carl Hols, has dubbed them the mutineers, the mutineers of the past.
People like Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey were all in support of this bill.
Even though Marjorie Taylor Green called it a shit sandwich.
Yes, yes, it reassured things, and there was still some angry antagonists out there, but it appeared as if they were going to walk away feeling like, you know, all right, everybody was saying, are you guys going to try to do this quote unquote motion to vacate and expel McCarthy being speaker? And what we lost track of in all of that is we were kept saying are you going to expel McCarthy? And they're like, no, no, no, stop
asking that question. What they had decided to do was not to force a vote that where they could try and get Kevin McCarthy out as speaker. They decided to simply shut down the House floor. You know, the way it works on any bill that is of real substance, you have to go to the Rules Committee, and the Rules Committee is the one that then decides on how many amendments are in order, how they'll be voted on. You know, is this up or down?
Is there?
You know, all sorts of aspects of the debate, how long, how much time each side gets, And so the Rules Committee sets that out and then you go to the floor and the full House has to approve that rule before the actual debate can begin. And so lo and behold, he's eleven to twelve. Rebels, mutineers, antagonists, far right, faction, cheese your phrase for whatever you want to call them. They had a little sneak attack, and they decided to
tank this rule. You know, he's only got a margin of four five votes depending on attendance on that particular day, McCarthy does, and they had they had, you know, eleven to twelve depending on the moment who decided they were going to vote against the rule. And when it comes to voting on the rule, just by tradition, it is almost always the majority party that carries the rule, and so the minority party never puts up any votes. They did so to pass the debt ceiling bill on May thirty first.
To avoid financial catastrophe.
Yes, extraordinary circumstances, and you know, with the imperivature of Joe Biden saying, yes, this is a good bill, let's vote for it. And so but not, they're not going to do that day in and day out. So McCarthy has to get his side to approve a rules so that you can get to legislation. And so they just decided they were going to shut down the floor of the House as a bit of revenge. Now, what they
were doing was impaleling themselves. This was a this was legislation that was all about, you know, just sort of hot button culture issue type of stuff.
Wasn't it the gas stove legislation. So this is a messaging bill that says that something blah blah blah gas stoves.
Right, yes, and it has no hope of passing. The Senate was never going to take it up, the President is ever going to sign it. The only reason this bill, and there was a package of them on other regulatory issues, the only reason this bill was coming to the floor was to appease people the right on the right wing faction.
But they like gas stoves, yes.
But they decided to make their point. They were willing to block their own bill, so they wanted to shut the floor down. And you know that happened on as it is. Well, it's a strange world of Congress, you know. Yeah, sometimes the way you mean is by punching yourself in the face. That's what they did. And it took about a week a week and a half to sort of
unpack this whole problem. And they basically kept having these meetings in McCarthy's office trying to say, we want to get more assurances, more concessions that we thought we had gotten back in January. You know, we want to reopen that agreement. They were talking. They were using that phrase as if this was actually some sort of binding contract that we had all seen.
What that McCarthy was running for speaker.
I mean, how would that even work.
Well, No, way back in January when he had to go through those fifteen different votes, McCarthy had gave in all a bunch of concessions, a lot that we know about, some that we don't know about, that were, you know, pretty big gives to the far right, giving them seats, giving them seats on important committees like the House Rules Committee, like the House Appropriations Committee, giving them, giving them the device by which they could expel McCarthy from from being speaker.
And so they thought they had certain commitments from him, and they might be stretching the truth here, but they thought that they could reopen this and try and get like ironclad guarantees that you will never again pass a bill just with Democratic votes or or you know where the majority, the majority on that big vote on the debt ceiling actually had fewer votes than the minority. There were one hundred and forty nine Republicans, but there were
one hundred and sixty five Democrats. They wanted to to just talk about this stuff, invent about this stuff, and they wanted to try and get a few more concessions out of them, and they did. You know, the thing about Kevin McCarthy that you have to understand is that he's going to a cave. It's a math problem. He knows that the only way he can quote unquote govern
is to give in to his exotics. And that means that you started seeing other things pop up, like there was a pretty far reaching attempt to not let people regulate guns and gun ammunition that got thrown into this package of bills that was considered sort of out of nowhere. One of the far far far right members, Anna Pauline Iluna, offered a central resolution to Adam Schiff.
Right that was yesterday.
Yeah, what she just threw that in there just to like get everybody upset.
Yeah, it just became an additional thing, an additional demand, Like we're going to have this vote on the floor, and you know, the leadership was like, all right, we'll let you have the vote, but you're probably going to lose. And sure enough, they did have the vote, and they did lose, as almost thirty House Republicans voted against censuring Shift and they were going to include an insane sixteen million dollar fine toward him that was just absolutely unheard of.
And this is all going back to statements he made about Russia's attempts to interfere in the twenty sixteen election. This was really playing toward Trump in all of the ways possible. These are their demands, these are the things that they want to see happen, and McCarthy is repeatedly giving in it unbelievable.
It's almost like a hostage situation, now right.
It is.
It's different than a hostage situation because that those situations end, they end one way. They end one way or another way. In one way is like safe and sound and somebody's paid a ransom, and the other way is not good at all. This is just a repeated gathering of the hostage takers with the hostage and they are just you know, regularly meeting with him to explain the next time they might hold him hostage. And if you you can avoid this next moment, if you give us this, this and
this now. And the response generally from McCarthy is okay, we'll have your vote. Go go put this crazy gunbill on the floor, Go do the central resolution. Okay, you've got it. There's a there's a lurking new demand that a Utah Republican Chris Stewart is resigning midterm. It's effective in September. He's on the Appropriations Committee. It's a really
important committee that controls all the federal spending. And the far right is putting down their marker now saying we want one of our own to get that committee slot. You know, these things are just evolving. So that's why I'm saying, it's not like your standard hostage situation where there's a standoff and it's done and finished. It's kind of never finished. It's this ongoing, amorphous hostage holding.
So it's a forever hostage situation, which it's like a lot.
So if you want to put one of these far right people on the Appropriations What I think is a little bit interesting about this debt ceiling debacle is that what happened.
Was that there actually was really a schism in that group.
Right.
I mean, the people who supported it are not the people who are mad at McCarthy right now, right, I mean they are like his people. So I mean there are people on the far right who are putting sand in the gears right, like people like Matt Gaates.
Yeah, there is a real divide. We have for years now, since about twenty fourteen or fifteen, whenever the Freedom of Caucus was founded by the farthest to to three dozen farthest right Republicans, we've sort of used that as just quick code word freedom of caucus. But what you're seeing this year is that there are some real divides within that group of about three dozen. There's a dozen or maybe up to two dozen. They're kind of friendly to McCarthy.
Marjorie Tayler Green and Jim Jordan are the best examples of it. They realize that McCarthy is weak and they can pretty much do almost whatever they want with McCarthy as speaker. So they like that. They like him. He lets them do whatever they want. He never tells them that they have to stop. And so the last thing they want is to have a new speaker who might try to be, you know, inforce some discipline.
But Matt ga does not happen.
Matt Gates is part of this faction of about a dozen or so who are both the most ardent Trumps supporters and also some of them like Chip Roy of Texas are really hardcore Heap Party descendants, and they actually believe in small government then less spending, and they actually kind of tend to gravitate more towards Ron DeSantis because they served in Congress with DeSantis and they actually kind of, you know, they don't admit this publicly, but they know
that Trump is really a sellout the most of their ideological conservative causes. Trump Trump doesn't care about spending and debts and deficits, you know, at all. And so this group of about twelve or so of them are the hardest, you know, the hardest farthest to the right in that caucus, and they are going to repeatedly make things tough on McCarthy. And that's where he's dealing with that group that twelve to fourteen of them are. It's not the whole three
dozen or so that are in the Freedom Caucus. It's that last dozen that are causing the biggest problems right now.
So interesting, so we do have a dead ceialing deal. It will carry America until this next election, so that is not going to come up. What do you see in the future on the calendar that could I mean a lot of this stuff is it's annoying for Republicans, but it doesn't have any larger implications for the rest of us.
True, there are two things, and they're intertwined. That are the next big land mines that are out here on the horizon where Congress will once again, through its own self inflicted behavior, become a big story again. By the end of September, you have the annual funding bills for federal agencies that come do in the previous four to five years. We had just sort of gotten into this rhythm.
It's not really rhythm at all. It's a rhythmic where you don't meet the deadline of September thirtieth, and you punt you keep the government open at what's called the continuing resolution, and eventually, by either the mid middle of December or sometimes late februaryly March, they pass all the funding bills in one big, massive thing that we call it omnibus bill. Well, House Republicans heeded those bills and
they did not want to do that. So this time they thought that they had set this up where you could start passing these bills one by one. They're supposed to be a dozen of them that pass individually. But now this hard right faction has said, we don't like these spending levels that you agreed to with Joe Biden, so we demand, we hear by demand that you will write these bills at about one hundred and twenty billion dollars less than what you had agreed to with Biden.
And also you can't cut at from defense, veterans affairs, or order securities.
How would that work?
It would work by if it were to actually become law. It would mean that places like you know, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, Department of Education, ARC, and National Park Service would all get big massive cuts of ten, fifteen to twenty percent, which would probably be pretty unpopular if it were ever enacted into law, right, And it's it's if they actually are going to make
some of their wing district moderates take those votes. Those are not good votes, whether they end up in law or not, and sort of become like made to order
political attack ads for Democrats to run against them. It's setting up this system where the Senate is going to right there funding bills at the agreed upon level, and the House is not, and the House is going to vote move them at much lower and so it becomes very hard to figure out how to pass those two things if the Senate and the House are one hundred
and twenty billion apart. Moreover, at some point later this year, the Biden administration is going to come in with a request for Ukraine war funding and they're going to need tens of billions of more dollars to support Zelenski and the war effort, and that is going to be a very very tricky vote. Normally, you would see that tacked onto one of these spending bills and it would just
be a writer so called rider. Right now, in the Republican Party, you know, thanks to a lot of vitriol by Tucker Carlson and some others, they've really built up an antipathy toward this war, and a lot of members of the House Republican Conference, even the ones that are traditional anti Russia hawks, are really really leery of casting
that vote for Ukraine war funding. And now if you're going to tack that onto a bill that is driven by the thenet and has higher funding levels for these government agencies than the far far right wanted to put on them, now you've got some real serious potential consequences here where you could have a government shut down at some point later in the year, and then you could
also have the new hostage. Here could be funding for the Ukraine war, and that's going to get really difficult because I think Donald Trump will come out heavily against that. Trump stayed silent on the debt ceiling deal because, as I said earlier, deep down he really doesn't care about
debts and death sits, and it's not his thing. But we have seen repeatedly over and over he does not want US funding the war against Putin, and he will most likely come out very much against that, and it will become.
A harder and harder vote for McCarthy.
Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much, Paul Caine. I hope you'll come back.
Absolutely, this is fun.
No Mofectly, Jesse Cannon.
Molly Jong Fast this Michael knowlesfellow.
A lot of people don't realize that he's one of those daily wire hosts that is, like, arguably in the top five most popular podcast hosts on the Internet, even though he flies under most people's radar.
And I'm going to tell you something, You'll be shocked. He's a little extreme.
He's not even a little extreme.
He sucks, and he's also radicalizing whoever it is who's listening to that podcast. And his new thing is that he's very furious. By the way, the whole thing is. They're just furious. That's the stick. They're furious about everything right and right now. They're outraged about the Pride Flag, and so the Daily Wires Michael Knowles, he's like Ben Shapiro,
but sort of a little bit longer. The Pride flag is quote unquote offensive to all normal people and should be banned from all public spaces because it's evil and degenerate. It is neither evil nor degenerate. But what is evil and degenerate is that these guys are brainwashing our youth, and so they are 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.