Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Matt Gates says he misses Speaker Kevin McCarthy. We have such an interesting show for you today. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy talks to us about the bill he spent three months negotiating, which Mike Johnson declared dead on arrival without reading. Then we'll talk to the dailyb smat Fuller about the chaos in the house under our speaker,
Mega Mike Johnson. But first we have slight senior editor, the author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the Battle to Save America, Dahlia Lithwick.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Dahlia, Hello, friend, what fun it is to ride through the one court open slay.
Hi, So we both listened to this incredibly.
I don't know sort of it. I mean, you are the expert here.
I was surprised at how little any of the justices were buying today.
Well, they were buying very little that Jonathan Mitchell was selling on the Trump side, until it became clear they were buying even less of what Jason Murray was selling. So listening to the first half, I was like, Wow, Mitchell is conceding every point he doesn't need to concede, and he's giving away the farm, and what's he doing? And then after Murray sat down, I was like, oh, well, somehow Mitchell has snatched victory from the jazz of defeat.
It was really strange.
I mean, you know, you listen to a lot more Supreme Court arguments than I do, but I was gobsmacked by how it seemed like Trump's lawyer was not a very good lawyer and kind of fight wo the justices a little bet. But then the justices were, even the liberal justices. We're not having anything from what the Colorado solicitor or general or any of that crew we're trying to sound.
I think that the play here that Jonathan Mitchell. Let's remember that guy is the architect of SB eight, right. You remember the vigilante bill in Texas that overturned Row even before Rowe was overturned. So I think what he did and his brief was very weird, and it focused on this officer thing.
Right.
It was like, we're not going to make our strongest argument, which came up a couple times today, which is maybe, you know, a five day trial in Colorado shouldn't be like the baseline that everyone has to agree proved he insurrected. And that was a strong argument. The dissenters on the Colorado Supreme Court were fussed about that. But that isn't the issue Jonathan Mitchell presses. What he presses is this officer thing, right, Trump isn't contemplated as an officer under
section three of the fourteenth Amendment. What's kind of interesting is that that was an elegant out for the court to decide this case on a really technical, you know, originalist text and meaning they could have just had this arcane, kind of bruined style, let's just like parse the text. What was weird And I think what you're reacting to is the degree to which a court that was given the opportunity to do that and loves to do that instead just dove in head first on the pragmatic political
how is this going to affect people? Argument? And so the whole second half of the argument was stuff like the Chief Justice complaining that what he called the plain consequences right, that states are going to disqualify democrats and then others are going to disqualify Trump, and it's going to be this patchwork, and you know, Elena Kagan at one point said, I'm just going to ask this bold question, why should a single state get to decide who gets
to be president of the US. So there's a way in which, given the gift of deciding this in a really court ish way, they kind of just decided it in the manner of nine people who are super worried about looking dumb.
I shouldn't laugh, because it was really depressing. And it seemed as if like the liberal justices were I mean, with the exception of Sodomyer, who seemed actually quite infuriated, I thought at times, the rest of them seemed sort of on board with this idea that they were just not going to touch it.
Yeah, I mean, I think Justice Kagan made it really plain that she did not want to be part of
unloosing kind of a disaster on the nation. And I think Katanji Brown Jackson was all in on this officer officer question and essentially said, like, if I do straight up originalist reading, I don't think that the drafters of the fourteenth Amendment meant to include you know, the president and the vice president I think they were going after, you know, lesser officers, Confederate officers who were infiltrating state legislatures. She basically conceded to the argument, which, by the way,
I think is just kind of a bad argument. But it was the argument that the Trump folks hung the entire thing on. So I think you're going to get I almost want to say unanimous. I agree with you that. I think so Mayor hated this whole thing, and she hated them. Essentially, this was giving a get out of jail free card to presidents who foment insurrections, who've never
held another office before. But I think otherwise you're going to get six seven eight votes either for this officer officer thing or for this you know, we can't have a lack of uniformity and therefore we need an enabling statute from Congress. But it was not liberal conservative. I think it was just I don't want to touch this hot potato. How about you?
I hate it to move on. That's what it was.
But it's so interesting because the officer officer think is so fucking stupid, and also like the whole idea that the fourteenth Amendment is somehow that that would mean that they could have elected Jefferson Davis.
Right, and the idea that they would be like, Okay, we're not going to let anybody who was a former Confederate or you know, who aided and embedded or enabled an insurrection, you know, have high office except the president and the vice president. That would be okay, it defies logic. You can read the historians briefs about this. On my podcast last week, I had an amazing historian who just debunked the crap out of these arguments. But I think
maybe your point is, and it's correct. I think when it the rubber hits the road, text and history isn't the whole shooting match.
It never was.
And the fact that Jonathan Mitchell, Trump's attorney just conceded that he was his whole case on this in Regriffin case, which is not a Supreme Court precedent and which was like later retracted by Sam and Chase who wrote it, you know when he's like, yeah, it's not binding, it's not president, it wasn't a Supreme Court decision, but it's the best thing we have.
It's a terrible decision.
Well, it's just a very political decision for somebody who was on the side of the Confederates.
But I think maybe.
If we try to back out of like the catastrophe that was oral argument. Maybe I want to put the best possible spin on this because I have to, because it's sobbing.
And I think the best possible spin.
Is to say that. On February eighth of twenty twenty four, the United States Supreme Court discovered humility. I discovered that even though it like wants to weigh in on what the Clean Air Act is and the Clean Water Act, and vaccine policy and immigration policy and you know, re asking questions about FDA approval of mifipristone, it's the expert on all things. But apparently today it learned it doesn't
want to be the decider. And maybe if next week it can say and thus we summarily affirm the DC Circuit opinion finding that Trump is not immune from criminal consequences. I could be on board for the newly humble Roberts Court.
How about you.
Yeah, I want them to go back and put rowback on the books. I mean, these fuckers, you know, states don't have the right to decide except.
When we like what they're designed.
We can vivisect the Voting Rights Act because of the dignity of states.
Except for the dignity of.
Colorado that wants to take an insurrectionist of the ballot. That's like not interesting. I think we just have to like look at this as a template of like hypocrisy. Suddenly when there's consequences for the court itself, everything goes away. I guess I would just say the other thing that is kind of interesting. I was really struck by how little we talked about the insurrection today. I mean, it
was like the biggest admission. I thought it was astonishing that the person who said the sentence you know, yes, it was a riot, quote a shameful, criminal, violent event came from Jonathan Mitchell, Trump's lawyer. Now, like hold on to the fact that he called it criminal, that's kind of useful. But I think that the fact that nobody else wanted to talk about it, and in fact we heard Justice is fretting about like, oh God, are we going to have to adjudicate what insurrections are going forward?
Like, oh, that would be awkward.
So the fact that, I guess I was really struck by the fact that the argument Colorado was making is of course, this is a case of first impression.
Of course there's no case law.
Of course this is crazy because we don't have presidents fomenting insurrections a whole lot therefore exigent need for the Court to act, and the Court sort of responding to that with this kind of slightly cowering, Oh, this is a case of first impression, and we don't have any doctrine, and we don't want to be the ones who decide this.
And so there's a weird way in which the enormity and singularity of the events of January sixth are the thing that both demand that the Court to be brave and also the thing that the Court is going to hide behind and say this isn't for us to decide.
It kicks us back to this idea that we have.
At every single point Republicans have taken the opportunity, and not even Republicans everyone, I mean not everyone, but largely most of our institutions have refused to hold Trump accountable. At every point, the Republicans in the Senate, maybe we shouldn't be doing this, this one, that one, I mean, at every point, they really have kicked the can or been too scared to right.
Right, it's a huge three dimensional game of checks and balances chicken, right, where everybody is saying like, we don't have to do it, do it through impeachment. And then the Republicans who voted not to impeach, we're like, we don't have to do it, do it through a criminal trial. Right.
Then we get to the criminal trial and Trump's lawyers are arguing, you should have done it through impeachment, right, And then Merrick Garland is too slow, and then you know Donald Trump is gaming the appellate system to push this thing to the election. And it just the vibe is very much that like, how did we build this entire infrastructure of checks and balances if nobody wants to check and nobody wants to balance, and nobody wants to put their.
Skin in the game.
I think that what I would say. And I've been thinking about this a lot, because if I'm right, and the court decides to do the kind of split the baby solemnonic thing where Colorado loses here but Trump loses next week on immunity, and then the court will say, look at how temperate and moderate we are, and then we have to play out how soon can Jack Smith, you know, get that trial done in Judge Tanya Chuckkins Court in DC. It does raise this question of will that be enough?
Right?
Like, is that going to be the thing that checks Donald Trump? Where it brings accountability? And here, Molly is where I just get stuck on the My god, we already had a January sixth investigation, we already had an impeachment, we already had, you know, Egene two times we are waiting for. It's like this thing keeps bonking us on the.
Head like he did it.
He did it, we all saw it.
We all saw it, and then we're mad that the next level of accountability didn't happen. But like I keep finding myself asking, what is going to change when either you know, he gets thrown off the ballot, which I guess is not going to happen after today, or what is going to change when there's an actual criminal conviction at the hands of Jack Smith. Are folks going to then say, oh, he is exactly the thing.
He purports to be.
And when he says he's in turning people in camps and weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies, maybe we should take him seriously. I think My slight answer to your question is what other thing needs to happen in order to persuade us to hold him to account? And that's the thing that ultimately fails is that we want this like Deis x Mackinna, you know, like to come in a like Congo line and fix it. And I'm just like, it's come, it's come, it's come. We've seen it.
So why are we expecting the next thing to change people's minds?
It's so crazy.
When we say the guardrails have hold, what I think we mean is that they actually haven't held right.
I mean in a certain way. I mean, this guy could be president again.
He could very well be president again. And I think it's worth recalling that every single time any of these attempts to hold him to account fails, he turns around and says, look, which hunt, Which hunt? You know, it's a conspiracy. I'm going after Hunter Biden or whatever he says. So you know, there's a kind of a slipstream in which he monetizes this and he uses it to say, Look, the system has clearly been weaponized against me, and that's why I'm going to weaponize it against you.
I think that.
The only thing we can say. I wrote a piece about this a couple of weeks ago, and it made people feel pissy. But it's just like, we just keep expecting one trial, one impeachment, one investigation to be the thing that saves us. And I just think we need to start to take responsibility for the fact that we're just going to have to be the thing that saves us because we're going to just have to vote the shit out of this problem.
I don't know what else to say.
I think that if the Supreme Court had an opportunity to day to say, this is precisely what the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment contemplated, and of course it's shocking and scary, and of course it's a huge political move and there are terrible risks involved. But someone's got to kind of pony up and do it like that wasn't what the Court did today, It's not what it's going to do. So I think the question is then, and I think it's a little bit of what you're asking, like,
how do we pony up right? Like what do we do in response to this? And I think it just has to be this has to be a route.
Yeah, it really sounds like I'm really depressed. Let's talk for two more seconds about just the other. There's this immunity case that's going to come up in front of the Supreme Court too, which is the king, you know, is Trump king or just a citizen? That probably will get a different response from the Supreme Court.
Right. That would be if the Supreme Court cared about
its YELP ratings, that's the thing it would do. It would say, Okay, we completely bailed on the Colorado disqualification case, but to pay you back, we are going to affirm the DC Circuit that held entirely reasonably and I would say, unassailably that Donald Trump is not, in fact the king of the world, so I think, and the way the DC Circuit structured its order this earlier this week, the Court has to act very quickly, and the Court will likely,
I think, want to act quickly because this is another urgent national election matter, right, it matters hugely. So the question is, really is the Court going to do the same thing it did in this Colorado case, which is, you know, expedited briefing, expedited argument, decide this thing fast enough that this case could presumably, you know, go to trial on some like you know, good timeline rather than the evil timeline when it goes to trial next October.
And I think that is an.
Easier case for the court to step into because there is lots of case law, there is lots of doctrine, because the DC Circuit so clearly got it right. And the alternative is saying that Donald Trump could order like seal team to come in and execute his political rival. So I just don't think there's a plausible argument that Donald Trump could prevail even with this court.
So I think that's probably the way we're going to go.
And then I think we're back to your earlier question, which is can this happen in time to affect things? And like that's a time space continual question, it's not a legal question. Oh, those big sides, they reverberate in my ears.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thanks really a dude, thank you for everything you do.
Did you know Rick Wilson and I are bringing together some friends for a general election kickoff party at City Winery in New York on March sixth. We're going to be chatting right after Super Tuesday about what's going on and it is going to probably be the one fun.
Night for the next eighty days.
If you're in the New York area, please come by and join us. You can go to City Winery's website and grab a ticket. Chris Murphy is the junior Senator from the great state of Connecticut.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Senator Murfey.
You negotiated a border deal, YEP, I did with Lankford.
And Kirsten Cinema. Give us two seconds of what.
That was like. It's four months of my life that I'm never getting back. A lot of time with two very complicated characters, but I love them both dearly. Yeah, I mean listen to Relegance appointed James Lankford to negotiate this border deal because he's our lner. Maybe I thought he was never going to get a deal. Maybe that was why this ended up happening the way that it happened. But we did get a deal. We spent four months working through every possible way to get the border under control.
We found a compromise which includes a lot of good things for immigrants and some expansions of legal pathways, and also contained some real tough tools for the president to stop you know, ten thousand people from showing up every day in an unplanned way at the border.
We got that deal.
We released the text on Sunday night, and within twenty four hours, Imaga Wright burned it to the ground, and every single Republican that told us they were going to vote for the thing ran for the hills because they decided that they wanted the border to be chaotic, and they couldn't imagine a world in which the border isn't chaotic because that's kind of like their oxygen.
It's so interesting because first of all, there has been no border legislation. Right, there was a swing and a miss in twenty thirteen. Right, there hasn't been anything in more than twenty years.
Right, yeah, I mean arguably forty years.
Yeah, so there's no legislation. Ergo, there's no money. Ergo Ice. Now you'll remember Ice as Donald Trump's favorite group of civil servants. I guess Ice is a civil servant. Sure Ice is now. Ice wanted this deal, right, I.
Don't think Ice had in the pigion on the bill. I know there's a lot of acronyms in this world, but the Border Patrol Union, which are the folks who are actually on the border, not the people doing the enforcement in the interior. The Border Patrol Union, which are a super conservative group of cats who have always supported Donald Trump, endorse this bill, as did the Immigration Lawyers Association, which is a pretty progressive group of individuals who represent
immigrants every single day. So this was like a true old fashioned DC compromise in which theill some groups on the left support it. So groups of the rights supported it. Democrats were going to vote against it, some Republicans were going to vote against it.
We just didn't think that.
Every single Republican was going to vote against it, which is essentially what happened.
Mike Johnson even before the text so the text wasn't released until Sunday, right yep, nineteen pages released on Sunday, the week before Mike to the Speaker of the House called it dead un arrival.
Yeah, And then like that night Senator Mike Lee was like, this is riculous. We need seventy two hours to read this, and like literally three minutes later he was like, this bill is terrible and I've gooing for But if they were not giving this bill a serious look, they didn't sit and have a very nuanced policy focused discussion on the merits of the bill. No, they decide that they couldn't live in a world in which the border was fixed,
Like what would they do on the weekends. They couldn't go down to the border and pretend to be border patrol agents and put on camouflage and bring the TV cameras with them. They live for the border being a nightmare, and they wanted to preserve it because that was their
only path of victory in November. So I think it's a real political problem for them because I think the whole country has seen that they're not sincere about closing the border, and I think they're going to have to live with the consequences of a bad policy decision and a bad political decision.
One of the I think important parts of the story that we did not start on that a lot of our listeners probably know though, is that all of this started because Magarreld decided they would only do foreign aid if Democrats addressed the board correct.
So in the fall we try to pass funding for Ukraine militarian assistants in Israel, and the Republicans say, no way. Even though we support that, we are not going to vote for the foreign aid we support unless you get a bipartisan deal on the border. And I ended up being the Democratic negotiator. You know what, Early on, I said, are you sure you want to go down this road? Do you understand that any bipartisan bill that we reach is going to be opposed by Donald Trump?
You're ready to go to war with Donald Trump? Really?
They said, yeah, we're willing to go to war with Donald Trump. As it turns out they were. We did exactly what they asked. We partnered together border or form. We got the deal with Langford and with Senator McConnell. He was part of our negotiations. And then as soon as they had the chance to combine them both together, they said, never mind, we don't want the border stuff. Put the Ukraine build back on the floor and we'll
vote for that. And as you and I are talking today, it looks like we're headed towards passage of the Ukraine funding by itself. We could have done that back in the fall when Ukraine wasn't like losing the war on some days.
So this is just Ukraine, or it's Ukraine Taiwan in Israel.
Ukraine Taiwan, Israel and humanitarian funding significant. You have ten billion dollars for Gaza. So this is not a small package. It's a big package. Just got a bunch of fentanyl funding in it. It will be very good when it passes, but we could have passed that four months ago.
It passes in the Senate likely because you need sixty votes and it seems like there's a Susan Collins as there are people there that are not Tom Kin.
Right.
Yeah, we've already passed one procedural vote and fourteen Republicans joined all the Democrats.
But you still need two more to get to sixty.
Right on the procedural vote, we've already reached sixty. So as long as that group of fourteen Republicans hangs with us, will pass it in the on file passages.
What we've learned over the last week is that the Senate is almost as fucked up as.
The House, but not quite well.
I don't know, it's pretty god to im close right now. The difference was that the Senate Republicans would occasionally break from Trump. Now they've made clear they will not. Right, they used to have leadership. I mean the Senate Republicans, you know, had a pretty strong leader. Senator McConnell, and I actually do appreciate the role Center McConnell played in these border negotiations. He was a big part of the team,
a staff was really excellent to work with. But you know, he signed off on that border deal and he voted against it, and he got four.
Republicans voted for it.
So there's a real big leadership crisis in the Republican Senate caucus right now, which I don't like.
I'm not rooting for it.
It's bad for the country and Democrats and the Senate to have this vacuum of leadership in the center of Republican caucus.
But it does exist. It's real.
Yeah, I wonder. I mean, here's Mitch McConnell. He has done things for Republicans. You know, keeping that Supreme Court seat open is the kind of thing I mean, it's hard to imagine a Democrat doing that. I mean, he really did things that were so incredibly craven and organized.
His reward is basically just nothing.
Yeah, I was nine.
This is a longer conversation, but I do think that Mitch mcconaughell, after January sixth, is a different guy. He has been more willing to get stuff done after January sixth I still deeply disagree with him on many many issues, but he's not the same guy.
So this will then go to the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson enjoys a one vote majority and failed to pass both a standalone Israel Aid and his own impeachment of Secretary my Orcus. So the way the House works, it can't go to the floor because the Rules Committee is filled with maga.
How can this possibly pass? There?
Yeah, a couple different ways.
It could go on something called suspension of the rules, which allows him to go straight to the floor, but he's got to get what two thirds of the votes that would be part non possible for this package. Or second, it's got to come to the floor through something called a discharge petition, which is when a majority of the members sign a petition, they can force a bill to the floor even if the majority leader, even if the Speaker doesn't want it to come to the floor. That
could be a possibility. Those are both long shots. Admittedly, you know, the state of the Johnson leadership effort is in crisis. Not a great time to have a big bill like the Ukraine Israel Humanitarian Bill coming over to the house. But there are a couple narrow pathways to get it done there. But let's just like admit the stakes. You and I, you know, sometimes talk about this stuff as if it's all theater.
It's not.
This is the future of the world. If Ukraine loses this war, it literally resets the globe for the next one hundred years. It basically tells big nations that they can invade neighbors and get away with it. And guess what, Russia will do more of it, China will start and we will be in a fundamentally different place than any of us have recognized or known since World War Two.
Yeah, it seems like if Vladimir Putin is able to take Ukraine, it will make everything different and it will put Europe in a terrible position.
It is not certain that Putin will keep going right.
You don't want to sort of assume dominoes all the time, but history does tend to repeat itself, and once a country feels that they have the green light. Are we sure that we would defend NATO if we wouldn't defend Ukraine. I worry that the Republican Party would be signaling that they're just out of the business of collective defense, and you would all of a sudden see a.
World of war.
It would eventually get the United States dragged in if not right at the outside.
I don't mean to be.
Hyperbolel like, I just I do think there are some real disaster scenarios if ukraated falls and falls easily because the United States abandoned.
Yeah, but I think about Reagan.
You know, we grew up during Reagan and like the idea that this Republican Party now, I mean, even Bush, they were so into nation building.
Yeah, there does have to be a smart balance between overdoing it right, I mean, and recognizing when a clear line has been crossed. Here, this to me is a clear line. This is an adversary Russia marching into Europe of that kind of I thought it had always been the line we all recognize. You don't have to settle everybody's problems around the world. I frankly ran as somebody thought, a lot of the wars we've been engaged in were pretty ill thought out, whether it be the way in
which we did Afghanistan, the whole mess Interaq. I frankly almost helped construct the anti Yemen war movement from the ground up, So I'll hold out my I wore modifies against anybody's. But Ukraine is worth saving, and I think that's the way that most Americans feel about it.
Yeah, And there are no American troops on the ground, or very few. This is not the same kind of war as the Gulf War.
Pretty reasonable investment, right, Ukraine's are not asking us to fight and die for them. They are asking us to help pay for them to fight and die. And this is frankly saving a lot of American lives later.
On, right, One of the things I want you to talk a little bit about, because it's sort of interesting, is the way the munitions have been made has been part of the Inflation Reduction Act, right.
Yeah, Well, listen, this has been a big ongoing issue. You know, we are so relying on a small handful of weapons and munitions makers to make what we need and what Ukraine needs that when you have a surge and demand, it's really hard to meet it. These is not like back in World War Two when we could turn one hundred different companies overnight into weapons makers. We don't have the ability to do that. So, you know, as I am always very wary of massive investments, in
the defense industrial complex. But it is true that we have seen a big exposure here of our ability to keep up with conflict around the world, and we are going to have to figure out why we have become so very quickly short changed on the amount of ammunition that Ukraine needs and make sure that we never get in this situation again. So I don't know that that's a big part of the Inflation Reduction Act, but it is a pretty big effort that's underway generally in Congress to try to.
Make sure that Ukraine has what it needs now and to make.
Sure that the future we have redundant capabilities for important things like ammunition and artillery shells.
Let's go into the Inflation Reduction Act though for a minute, because like one of the reasons why Trump was so panicked about the border was because he sees that this inflation was transitory and that the economy, while not every consumer is feeling it, the economy is broadly stabilizing, and so this would mean that the Inflation Act actually reduced inflation, that inflation was transittory, likely because of the pandemic and the supply chain issues, and that Secretary Yellen and Biden
were right.
Most all credible economists said we'd be at a recession by now.
Except Paul Krugman, right.
And Joe Biden and his team went to work on the policy is necessary to keep us out of a recession. People were deeply skeptical that Joe Biden could do that, but he did. And you saw the job growth rate last month. It is just stunning how many jobs have been created under President Biden, more than any other president in their first term. It is true that Donald Trump was hoping that the economy would be in the tank.
It is not.
It is growing by leaps and bounds. We have structurally low unemployment. Everybody who wants a job out there can get one by and large. But there are also other really important things happening in this economy. One of them that people didn't see happening either is crime coming down by stunningly large.
Percentages except in Washington, d s.
Well, but there's always outliars.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that, but I gotcha.
But listen, that's what Republicans will say, Well, there's this.
One city where crime is going up. Well, that is true.
You know, crime is going up in New Haven and it's going up in Washington, but it's not going up in Hartford, and it's not going up in Bridgeport, and it's coming way down in Baltimore. But overall, homicides in our cities have come down by twelve percent since last year. That is the biggest one year drop in the history of the country.
So inflation coming down, crime coming down.
Jobs going up, growth going up, that's a pretty good record for an incumbent president to run on. And it is true that Republicans said, okay, what do we have left, Like, let's you know, look onto the Cocona shells. What do we have to run on? And the immigration? All right, the border is a mess. Let's run on that. And we called their bluff.
We said, okay, will agree to some pretty tough.
Changes of the border if you will too, and they would because they know that they can't run in the economy.
They can't run on inflation, they can't.
Run on a crime.
So they want to run on the border.
And the only way they can run on the border is to keep the border a mess. But I think they're not going to get away with I think Americans are going to know what just happened that they refuse to fix the border because they want it to do.
And when you talk to constituents you come from very blue.
State, do you feel like they are really seeing what's happening or has Ben Shapiro shaped the narratives so much that and Fox News?
I mean, do you feel like they're informed or not?
I think there's a couple of things happening. One most of the is, you know, Molly, most Americans are not plugged in at all. They're just living their lives. They don't know what's happening in Washington, and they know what's happening lives. And people definitely feel that things are better,
but not good enough. People out there are working, Unemployment is really low, but they're still having trouble saving for college, and rent is too high, so there's still paying out there in a very in a very real way.
And so we need to sort of do both right.
We've got to take credit for how much better things are, but also be cognizant of the fact that that's going to fall flat with some folks. And then that very siloed media and information infrastructure is also there are a bunch of people even in kinetic and in blue kinetic get all their news from conservative news sources, and really do believe that Joe Biden has done nothing to help the economy. And that's a hard thing to solve for.
But I think people are feeling better. I sense that back in Connecticut, and I think increasingly they know that Joe Biden has a lot to do with that.
Thank you so much, Senator Murphy.
Thanks Boby.
Matt Fuller is the Washington bureau chief at The Daily Beast.
Welcome back, too fast, politics smaller?
How are you, lolly?
You know I'm living the dream, so let's talk. I mean that, of course I wrong. Call you you got. I don't fucking know what.
It seems to me that the United States House of Representatives that the Republican who is the Speaker.
Of the House right now, Mike Johnson, does not know how.
To count discuss this is a common affliction for Republican speakers. He's not the first to be struck by this counting problem. He had two votes on Tuesday that failed. The first was this Alejandro mayorchest the Department of homelyan Security secretary impeachment. This one is maybe less a problem of counting one, two, three, four, and more that Democrats might have out maneuvered Johnson a bit. They had votes earlier in the day and they knew
it was going to be close. They knew they were going to lose three Republicans, but it looked like there was going to be some dem absences. There's a couple of Republican absences.
So al Green was having surgery.
Having surgery, but a pretty serious situation, and he came back straight from the hospital, Hubert onto the out floor, would wheeled in and he cast what ended up being the deciding vote, and they were deadlocked at two fifteen to fifteen. They had a fourth Republican vote no, just for procedural purposes that they can bring it back up a little easier. But yeah, I'll be It's one of those things where you start questioning, why are you guys really bringing this up when you don't have the votes.
I mean, you could bring this up in a week or two when Steve Scalice, the majority leader, he's back, he's currently undergoing cancer treating himself. You could just kind of spring it on people on a faster day where it's very clear that Democrats don't have the numbers. They're expressing confidence that they were going to get it done. The truth twist, they were counting on Democrats to make sure they got it done, and that's just never a gamble you want to make.
So they were counting on Democrats to vote to impeach my orc As.
They were counting on Democrats, a few Democrats to not show up. And right now we're in a situation where the margin is so close. He basically have three votes to spare, and if there's one extra dem Apps or one extra Republican absence, it can mean quite a bit to the actual margin. I mean again, they were tied at two fifteen two fifteen, and they lost by one vote, and that one vote was really Al Green or really
any other Republican. I mean, you could say Kevin McCarthy resigning, or George Santos as he did he explicitly said do you miss me yet? That would have also been the deciding factor. But they were counting on Democrats to not show up, particularly Al Green, and when he did, they were kind of screwed, right, And that is.
Why Marjorie Taylor Green gave this really weird speech where she said they're hiding members from us. That was what she was referring to she was not having a fever dream they.
Were hiding in the comet ping pong basementner or manning back Jewish space lasers or anything. No, she's right to an extent. Democrats kind of played this one close to their chest.
Good for them.
Yeah, it feels like a move that Nancy Pelosi would have done. Again. You have Democrats show up to the first vote, they get account of that, they look at the numbers, they say, here's what we can lose. As long as you know, the same people show up, we're going to be good. And then it's just a matter that Al Green decided, no, you know what, I'm gonna make it to this vote, and he, for the time being,
saved may Orchis from this impeachment. It's obviously an embarrassing little situation for Mike Johnston, but it is one they will rectify at some point. I do expect them to have the numbers and get you an impeachment at some point. But it's just adding to the sort of tactical failures of Mike Johnson. I mean, right after that vote, they have Israel Aid. Because Republicans are having these issues with their own conference where members are taking down rules. A
rule basically just sets up consideration for the bill. It usually determines how long they can debate it, how many amendments, whatever. And they've not been able to adop for many rules because it's just a partisant vote. Democrats vote no, Republicans vote yes. When Democrats are in charge, Democrats vote yes, Republicans vote no, and the sacredness of the rule kind
of fell apart earlier this year. That happened under Kevin McCarthy, but it's been a constant pain in their side, particularly under Mike Johnson, where these Conservatives who are just mad about everything are voting against rules and taking them down and basically just taking over the floor. They're blocking consideration of anything. So you had a bunch of Republicans who were saying, I'm not voting for an Israel bill that's not offset with cuts elsewhere, I will vote down the rule.
You also have the Rules Committee, the actual Republicans on the Rules Committee who determined this, who might not voted out of the committee. So that's another hard wrinkle there.
You have a very maga Rules Committee, which was Kevin McCarthy who set that up.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that was partly to get the speakership, Kevin McCarthy kind of agreed to putting some of these hardline members like Chip Roy on the Rules Committee. So you know, now Mike Johnson's living with that reality and he's trying to pass bills to just circumvent the Rules Committee by suspension, which requires two thirds a majority. That number also changes with how many absences and people show up, but let's say it's usually around two hundred and eighty votes.
I think they came up with about two hundred and fifty for the Israel bills, so they are well short. And that's also going to your point, that's a real counting problem. There's not really many excuses on that one. You can say, you know, Democrats out maneuvered Republicans on the Majorca's impeachment, but the fact that the Israel bill failed, that that truly is just counting. There's no one hiding them. So that one that's just a true failure of math.
But also with this Israel bill, the sort of activists thought the bill was bad and didn't want it to pass either.
Part of the problem is Republicans are trying to stake up this position where only Israel passes and Democrats are on the other side of this saying, well, we're not going to just do Israel only. Maybe Republicans could force their hand on this a bit, but they very strongly want Ukraine and Taiwan as part of that deal with Israel's aid. If you just passed Israel, it's gonna it's gonna get held up. And if you decide that you know, we're gonna move forward with Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, then
it's it's gonna go through. And that's the reality that we're living in now. You can like it or dislike it, and there's plenty of members who dislike it. But yeah, I mean, just passing Israel is basically a gambit to challenge Senate Democrats to hold that up vote no, to not take up the vote. This afternoon, the Senate looks like it's fine to pass this sweeping Israel, Ukraine Taiwan bill, And now you know, the ball is sort of in
Mike Johnson's court. Is he going to allow that larger package to go The fact that he was unable to pass the Israel only bill makes it more challenging for him to say, no, we have.
On this episode Chris Murphy, who was also talking to me about procedurally how this would work. I know this is West Wing fanfic, but right now Mike Johnson only has a one vote major.
I think he's got closer to three. The actual breakdown is two nineteen to two twelve, which, again, it matters a great deal if you have an absence or two on either side, but you're looking at a three or four vote majority. Again, it depends on how many members actually show up. That is a very narrow, paper thin majority, and anytime you have you're relying on, you know, a few votes. If someone put a motion to vacate on the floor right now, I'm not sure Mike Johnson would
survive that. He might survive it with some Democrats not voting again, that would lower the threshold for him. But this is a truth that Kevin McCarthy understood. Is the truth that John Bayner, Paul Ryan, they all understood. The second that you rely on Democratic votes to hold your position,
you really don't have that position anymore. Every negotiation you go through, Democrats are going to be holding this over your head, saying, hey, someone's gonna bring up a motion to VAK and maybe this time we're not going to care.
We're gonna let it go through. So as much as Democrats have said, you know, we would protect Mike Johnson if say, he put Ukraine funding on the floor and he faced the motion to VAK, which he's had that promise from Marjorie Tilergreen that if he does do that, she will make a motion to vacate against Mike Johnson. He kind of knows he's living in a very precarious position here. And you know, yeah, Democrats can say we'll help you out, we'll vote for you, or well, we
just won't vote and we'll lower that threshold. But the reality is again like as soon as you are relying on democratic votes, it's kind of over for you. And again McCarthy also understood this, which is why he didn't really seek out help from Democrat and that everyone was always questioning why didn't he go to He keep jeffries, why you know he's facing this motion of VAKA in October over a continuing resolution just keeping the government lights on for a few weeks.
We don't know that he didn't, right, I mean, there was some talk that he may have. It's just that Democrats really hated him by that point because he lied to them so many times.
We can't dephysically say yeah, but the reporting has been them from McCarthy and from Jefferies that he didn't do that. I guess you never quite know the truth, but we do know no Democrats supported him. You're right, I'm not sure that even if he had asked, Democrats would help him.
Yeah, they really hated McCarthy in a way, they don't hate Johnson.
That might be true right now. I think Mike Johnson at the moment is sort of a curiosity. No one really knew this guy very well. He was kind of a quiet member of Congress.
People liked him, you know, from what I understand. People thought that he was honest and not a liar.
Yeah, well, he is very quickly developing a reputation as a liar or really as someone who kind of talks out of both sides of his mouth. And again, this is just kind of a reality of governing in a very slim Republican majority, where you're always trying to appease people. You're always dealing with today's problems today and worry about tomorrow's problems Tomorrow. We published Peace that was basically about the five stages of grief that Mike Johnson is going
through into speakership. And this is true of every Republican speaker that I've covered for now close to fifteen years. You always have this major denial phase. That's the one that really sets up all the other problems because it's always we're going to get appropriations bills passed, We're going to get our numbers passed. We're going to pass this Israel Aid only bill. We're going to force the Democratic Senate to do this. The President's going to sign our bill.
And they're living in denial, and a lot of the leaders know that they have to go through the motions. They have to sort of illustrate to the conference that they tried. While Republicans really hate is giving in and not even trying here that complain all the time, what it leads to is actually setting up expectations that they can't meet. And Mike Johnson has done that over and over again, whether that's I'm not going to pass a
CR again, We're not. I'm done with CRS, no more CRS, no more continuing resolutions, and then he has to rely on continuing resolution after continuing resolution or we're going to get major spending cuts. You know, I want to address this debt. We got to tackle this. And then, of course, what does that do well, It sets you up for when it's the same spending bill that was established earlier in the year by Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden and
you're adopting those same numbers. Now Republicans are like, wait a minute, didn't you say we were going to cut those things. I understand the realities of being the speaker, which is that you kind of have to tell people what they want to hear to some extent, and give yourself room to do what you have to do. But Mike Johnson has continually stepped on rakes that no one knew existed and Israel aid and trying to pass that by suspension. That's a great example. May Orciss. You know,
impeachment has to be on this Tuesday. It didn't have to be that Tuesday. He could have brought it up on a day when he knew there was a bunch of Democrats gone and done it that way. So he's finding ways to lose that. Kevin McCarthy might have navigated a little bit better and I think he's at that point now where Republicans are really starting to get frustrated with him.
So interesting.
So yeah, you definitely saw a lot of Republicans saying that this was embarrassing and they were frustrated, and et cetera, et cetera. Just plays out for me. There's a special election next week for the Santo seat. We don't know where that goes. There's polling that's all over the place. And then there are other specials coming up too, right.
Right there are and again you have Santo's seat open, Bill Johnson Ohio, You're going to have Kevin McCarthy seat. It's going to be a fragile majority. I think Republicans will hold on to it. Of course, I don't know that at any point in this in this Congress they've actually been at full four thirty five. Usually someone dies. That's kind of a weird thing about Congress too, is in a body of full of old people, there's usually a few deaths. So yeah, it's going to be a
precarious majority. The fact is, and this is one of those things that Republicans don't want to acknowledge that if you want to actually pass bill that are going to get signed into law. You're going to have to work with Democrats. You're not going to pass bills and just force it down the sentence throat and take Biden by the hand and make them sign it. That's always been true, and they've never wanted to acknowledge that. Again, that's that's
sort of the denial phase that they're still in. And you hear from Republicans time and time again, it's just so true that you know, why won't he lead?
Right?
I was hearing that so much during Obama, Why won't he lead? And they're just saying it now they're Republican speakers. Why will Mike Johnson Lee? Why can't we lead? And it's just the reality of governing that you have to work with the other side. They don't have the votes to just pass messaging bills and force it on the Senate in some way. And I think may Orcus is actually a good illustration of this. You have a bunch of Republicans who are just sort of reactionary, like they're
allergic to saying yes, okay. Tom McClintock was one of the three real Republican votes to he we went against may Orcus that guy, there's nothing that says to me, Oh, you know, he's a principal man on this, and he's going to you know, vote against it because of this, And he's just someone who likes to say no, right, And Ken Buck is a sort of principal guy who's you know, in the last stage of his commercial career and is like thinking about a lot of things and
wondering if this was the right thing or that was the wrong thing. He's prone to say no too. And then you have Mike Gallagher, who is more of the more moderate guys who's basically saying this is terrible precedent. Guys like can't you see that Democrats are just going to turn around and start peaching our guys. Those are
all good arguments. The reality is, when you have a Republican majority full of people who love to say no, who are actually incentivized by their party basis say no, you're going to have people who say no relying on when it comes down to we need everyone to say yes. That's a really tough proposition and I think, you know, Mike Johnson is learning that very quickly.
Well, it also seems like the MAGA wing is able to intimidate people to get what they want.
But the MAGA wing is not very organized.
So like if the MAGA wing had wanted my orcis impede, I mean they're the closest Republicans have to a vote whipping organization, right.
Yeah, and they are.
They killed that border bill.
Well, that was very quick, and again that was kind of a systemic opposition because you know, basically, Donald Trump said I don't want to give Biden a political win, and as amazing of an explanation as it is, Republicans bought it, and we're basically repeating it on Capitol Hill saying we can't give him a political win, which is you know, again like they're out there yelling about the crisis at the border, and here's a bipartisan bill addressing
that crisis, and you're saying, I don't want to take half a loaf, I don't want to take a step toward a solution. I want to preserve this vote for my president, Donald Trump. But majorcus Yeah, that's a great example. The MAGA wing was, you know, forced told that we need to impeach this guy. This is part of us addressing the crisis. That were even though it wouldn't address anything. The Senate is not going to actually uphold this impeachment and prosecute him in the Senate with guys like Clay
Higgins and whatnot. That's not going to happen. But yeah, they're they're trying to get in line. They're trying to go after guys like Mike Gallagher. You have this Trump operative. Alex Brucewitz announced yesterday he's forming an exploratory committee to primary Mike Gallagher.
Does he even live in Wisconsin?
ALUs bruce Witz is from rip On, Wisconsin, with the good supposed birthplace of the GOP. It is outside of the district, but it's not far outside of it. I think it's about thirty minutes outside the district.
This is pretty close.
Yeah, it's close enough for him to mount a primary campaign to some extent. I don't know that he'll eventually run. I don't know that he would win. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. But I think the message is clear that if you cross the MAGA crowd, we will come after you. There will be repercussions, and they are trying to convey that message.
Thank you so much, Matt.
Fuller, thank you.
No moment Jesse Cannon, h joink Fast.
Unfortunately, we have to talk about Curtis siewa man who is known as living in a three hundred and twenty square foot studio apartment with fifteen cats and wearing a costume will he arrasses people on the streets in New York in a racist way. What are you seeing here?
Actually give an opinion here?
I feel like I've hated this guy for three or four decades.
Yeah, I was actually going to say that, because we're both New York City people, we can attest that we both have hated Curtis Ywaw. I've hated him as long as I've hated Rudy Giuliani. I mean, he's very much of that vintage Curtis Leewa is trying to stage to come back. Obsessed with the refugees coming over the border. Group found someone claimed that they were a refugee.
Turned out the guy he was not illegal.
Again, illegal as you know, a horrible word, but he was in fact just a guy from the Bronx who spoke Spanish. Curtis Leiwa and his people in ridiculous Red Beanies all beat him up. Was on Sean Hattie's show, it was in fact not taken down.
It is still up from the Washington Examiner on x and.
So this stupid, racist fuckering is our moment of fuckword. 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.