America's Talking - Episode 60: Poll shows FBI's Mar-A-Lago raid has eroded trust in the agency

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb & D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss: Washington, D.C.’s vaccine mandate for kids under fire as school year approaches. Poll: FBI's Mar-A-Lago raid has eroded trust in the agency. Cheney's hint at presidential run after loss met with skepticism. Biden signs $740 billion climate, tax and health care bill into law. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the American Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can find all of the Center Square's great podcasts at Americastalking.com. Joining me today, as always, is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. We're recording this on Friday, August 19th. Casey, it seems like every week is a busy news week nowadays. President Joe Biden signed the massive new tax and spend bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which most economists say won't reduce inflation. Republican U.S. Representative Lynn Cheney of Wyoming hints at a presidential run after getting clobbered in our Tuesday primary. And this week marked the one-year anniversary of the U.S. military's disastrous exit from Afghanistan. How do you keep up with it all, Casey?

Well, Dan, thanks to your tutoring, just being under your tutelage and everything you've taught me over the years is really just takes so much of the credit, you know. Casey, I think we've known each other for about a year. About a year. Wow. Well, see, that's just another testament to just how good you are, Dan. Also, just let me know. I know raises are coming up, so I'm looking forward to that email.

But I know there is a lot going on. We are very on top of it. The center square.com is where you can read about it. You know, we talk about five stories every week on the podcast, but there's a lot more that we can ever get to. We can't get to in as much detail as the center square.com. So if you are interested in more, that's the place to go. But I mean, I think the place to start is this $740 billion climate tax and health care bill, which really came.

I mean, you probably remember that the general knowledge here in D.C. or the common sense general wisdom was that Biden was done as far as his agenda. You know, he had some good things happen. But, you know, it was over. Midterm elections were coming up. And, you know, just getting enough political members. I went some after what he had done and all the inflation that was happening. It just didn't seem realistic.

But really, there was an interesting moment when Biden signed the bill, the $740 bill this week, where he looked and he gave this really interesting smile to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. And then he just handed in the pen. And I think that moment said at all, which is that this was so much actually Joe Manchin's doing more than Biden. You know, a lot of the proposals that were passed were really spearheaded by Biden. but Biden did his best to get this pass and didn't really happen until Joe Manchin came along and really rallied the pieces of the bill that he liked. He added in some different tax increases and IRS changes that would actually pay for the bill. And that's how they kind of justify

calling it an inflation reduction act, is that it will reduce deficit spending, which therefore will reduce inflation, which is really interesting that they're saying that reducing spending will cut inflation because up until now, Biden has not acknowledged that spending is what causes inflation. If you listen to Biden administration for the last year, Putin causes inflation and supply chains cause inflation. So it's just kind of funny that you can call, you know, saying that reducing government spending will reduce inflation.

It's really like an admission that his recent government spending increased inflation, I guess. But that's what, you know, we can, we don't know where you want to start. We can dig into the IRS stuff, the climate spending. There's a lot of green energy spending. Things like insulin are going to be kept at a $35 per month co-pay. So this is a wide-ranging bill. It's a lot of money.

And it's going to be some big changes to the IRS. Yeah. So one of the, let's talk about the IRS part of it, because that seems to have drawn the most criticism from Republicans and independence alike, they're going to spend tens of billions of dollars, the federal government, to hire 87,000 new IRS agents who are going to conduct tax audits on Americans. What's not to like? What's not to like, indeed.

I mean, we made this point last week, but there's not, you know, that many billion-dollar companies or billionaires or giant corporations. If you listen to some of the talking points in support of this bill, they'll say, well, we're just got to hold the wealthy Americans accountable. But it doesn't take 87,000 agents to do that. And, you know, the IRS says. And let's let's, let's, I'm sorry to interrupt, but yeah, go ahead. That's 87,000 new agents. That's on top of the, what, something like 80,000 agents they already have.

Yeah, I think it's like 67,000. You fact check us on that. But this is going to be more than double the size. This is going to double the size of the IRS. And so this is no small. thing. This is not a marginal increase. This is a really more than a doubling down on auditing. I've talked to a lot of, you know, small business experts, small business people. They're very concerned about this, that this is going to be coming for them. You know, there's about 30,

more than 30 million small businesses in this country that are concerned, you know, that this could be a target name. And for people listening, you know, if you, if you cut hair in your living room for a little extra money, if you, you know, chop, firewood to, you know, on your land and sell it on the side. If you do some social media marketing for a, for a friend and get paid a little bit, I mean, this is the kind of stuff you need to be thinking about now because there's 87,000 new agents who are going to be looking at of this. They're going to be, you know, checking and double checking to make sure that everything's in order. And so, wait, let me jump in here again. And for, for the listeners who think, well,

if you don't cheat on your taxes, why should you worry about being audited by the IRS? It's expensive when you're audited by expensive and time-consuming when you're audited by the IRS. You need to get your own legal counsel to work on it. You and your company, depending on what company you have, need to dig into old records. And it's just a it's a huge, huge time and money suck. even if you haven't cheated on your taxes. Right. And, you know, no system is perfect.

I'm sure people are found guilty that didn't cheat on their taxes. You know, there's always going to be the exception. I mean, so this is something, it is going to be a big, as you said, administrative costs for small businesses. Now, briefly, I think you might say, wow, it sounds crazy. Why am I to do this? Well, this was a way for the Biden administration to increase tax revenue without raising taxes. And so raising, you know, raising taxes.

taxes or something on people making less of $400,000 would violate a campaign pledge. You really didn't want to do that. So instead of raising taxes, he's going to audit them. You're making less than $400,000, which doesn't violate his campaign pledge. But there you go. Some of the other spending in the bill includes among the criticisms of the bill is these massive tax credits that are going to go to billion-dollar companies to produce solar panels, electric vehicles, parks for electric vehicles.

Just briefly talk about that. Yeah, so some of the spending includes big investments and what's called like clean energy, $270 billion in tax credits for things like manufacturing wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, other electric vehicle in green technology. And of course, when you spend this much money,

there's going to be some things that are worth supporting, of course, I think renewable energy probably is. a big part of the future and something worth investment. There are questions about, you know, how much of this actually benefits China because China really has cornered their market on renewable energy manufacturing and production. They've kind of looked ahead in the future and said, we want to own this market, you know, and then the way that, you know, Saudi Arabia and some of these Middle Eastern countries own the oil market, for example. So when you talk about shifting from oil to renewable energy, I mean, there's a lot of good reasons for that.

But just know that economically you're shifting from Middle East being your supplier to a lot of China being your manufacturer. So that's a big national security thing to think about another tax that is a 15% minimum income tax on companies with over a billion dollars in revenue that's helping pay for this. So, you know, one thing that's really kind of controversial on this bill is there was a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. And then now there's talk that Ford's going to raise their, you know, price of electric vehicles by 8,500. So it's kind of poor timing. I don't know if it's related. It's just kind of a funny, like, political thing that these things are often like poor timing. But it plays in the argument against subsidies, which is when you subsidize companies, they just increase.

They don't, they don't pass it on consumers. You know, it just stays in the corporations. It doesn't actually make it triple down to regular Americans. But, you know, there's also spending on. on the healthcare things. We talked about insulin. There's going to be negotiation of some Medicare, you know, negotiating some drug prices, you know, pros and cons to that.

But it really focuses on health care. It focuses on the climate spending and then these new taxes to pay for it. Well, I can't wait until the reversal of inflation kicks in because Americans are paying way more now for gasoline, for food. for other goods and services than they were just two years ago. So I can't wait for that aspect to kick in. Let's move on to the Liz Cheney story. The U.S. representative from Wyoming faced a primary opponent this week, and she lost pretty badly.

afterwards, of course, she's one of the handful of House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump. She has been a huge critic of the former president sitting on the panel that's investigating the January 6th riots at the Capitol. She got primary Trump endorsed her opponent. she lost big and afterwards she hinted that she might be running for president. What's your take? Yeah, this is pretty interesting. And you may think why should I care about this Cheney losing in Wyoming. But I think it actually has big implications for these midterms, but especially 2024.

You noted that Trump endorsed her opponent, but actually Republican leadership in the House also endorsed her opponent. So she was not just, it wasn't just a petty, you know, Trump doesn't like this to anything. The Republican Party largely abandoned her. She was the House Goki chair. So it's very interesting for someone in party leadership to be abandoned by the party and then to lose their primary by 37 points. That leadership position was one that the Republicans kicked her out of last year. Right, yeah.

So she had been in party leadership, was kicked out and then lost her primary by 37 points, which is just like a whopping incredible loss for an incumbent. even if it just an incumbent without being a party relationship lawsuit, it would be huge. So it really pitted the pro-Trump and anti-Trump wing to the Republican Party against each other. And what it seemed to show, at least in this small example, is that the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party, at least in Wyoming, and I think in a lot of other parts around the country, is still very strong, very motivated, still listening to what former President Trump is saying, taking, you know, notes from him. on who to vote for, who not to vote for. And an interesting, you know, tidbit that I dug up was that of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, only two will be on the ballot this November.

And that's from 538. But that means that eight are no longer going to be in Congress. Right. And some of that was, you know, people who knew they were leaving Congress so they were less afraid to vote to impeach Trump. But it's not just that. It's people like Lishini who lost their private. primaries. So, I mean, if you're Trump or Trump's a porter, you kind of have to feel good about that,

that those Republicans, we've seen this, you know, time and time again, the Republicans who stand up to Trump get squished pretty quickly. I mean, you saw it. Ted Cruz almost was destroyed by it, but others who stood up to Trump in the election or throughout, you know, his term have, have just been destroyed politically. And Liz Cheney's the latest victim, these 10 House Republicans who did it, most of them were wiped out or knew they would lose them. or left or didn't or voted against Trump because they knew they were leaving. And so it's still very politically risky in the Republican Party to take on Trump. So I know we have a very important midterm elections here coming November. Eighth, control of the U.S. House is at stake. Control of

the U.S. Senate is at stake. But I still can't stop thinking about 2024 and what's going to happen there with, you know, President Biden going to be in his 80s by then, you know, already showing several signs of decline, stumbles all the time. Is he going to run again? Of course, former president Donald Trump, at least sounds like he's planning on running. And then you've got these upstart other candidates, the Florida, Florida Governor Ron DeSanis on the Republican side. Now perhaps Liz Cheney on the Democrat. side. You got California governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois's billionaire governor, J.B. Pritzker. It's going to be fascinating. It really is. I think the DeSantis versus Trump relationship is probably the most

interesting of all of it because DeSantis has a lot of cloud. I think he's definitely one of the frontrunners in a public areas, but he said that he doesn't want to run against Trump. So much of his start in politics came from Trump. So how they sorted out, would DeSantis be his VP? or what he wait. You know, I think Trump is aging. His health should be, you know, should be talked about at least. It is a concern. He seems to be pretty healthy right now, but he, you know.

He's also up there, yeah, right? Yeah, he's getting up there in years. So you're right, it's going to be very interesting. Well, sticking on the subject of former president Trump, we talked last week about the FBI's raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida looking for classified White House documents. that the president allegedly took from the White House and kept his estate. Republicans, of course, call it a political witch hunt. This week, the House judiciary Republicans ratcheted up their investigation of the FBI's

raid of Trump. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, this, you know, one thing that's been really interesting about those raids, is it's rallied the Republican Party around former President Trump. in a way that he hadn't had in a while, you know, Trump really made his issues contesting the 2020 election. And then January 6th and, you know, the way people were being treated after that. And a lot of Republicans just don't have the stomach for going along with President Trump on those issues. And so they've been silent or they've kind of backed away from him or just focused on other things,

focused on attacking Biden. But then this raid happened. And a lot of Republicans who have been silent or hadn't talked much about the 2020 election, suddenly came out full-throated support for Trump and attacking the way that he'd been treated. And so the FBI is like unwittingly rallied the Republican Party around Trump in a way that hadn't happened, I think, in years. And part of that is a lot of, you know, Republicans saying we need to investigate how this happened. And so Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week, they ratchet it up, as you said, that investigation into the FBI raid. That includes, you know, Ohio rep, Jim Jordan, who's, who's a leader on that committee. But they have called, they sent what's called preservation notices

to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Ray and White House Chief of Staff are on claim. And preservation notice has basically put people on notice that they need to preserve their documents because for legal proceedings for investigative investigatory purposes so that, how this happened, why this raid happened, what the evidence for it, and the motive for it can be looked into. You know, Chip Roy gave this quote. I think it captures a lot of the sentiment. The American people deserve answers about the FBI's unprecedented raid on former President Trump's home. We will settle for nothing but complete cooperation for the DOJ. So you see kind of a renewed, steely resolve, and that word unprecedented has been thrown around a lot. You know, unprecedented, unprecedented.

The way a former president has been treated, you saw that. And we talked about this last week that for all Trump's talk about, you know, putting Hillary Clinton in jail and locking her up and going after a D.C. He didn't really actually go very aggressive against any of his. We didn't act on it. Right. No, he didn't really. It was. And we see that happens a lot. There's kind of an unspoken agreement to not go after that. Just because you see, you've seen it history and you see in less stable countries around the world, hallmark of them is that new leaders go after their old enemies. And so it's destabilizing for the country when you see that. I mean, if a former president really did do something deserving of it, then okay, but that's the question. Did he really do something deserving of it? Now, the FBI said that there were classified documents at Trump's home, which is really interesting.

It would be interesting to see what those documents were or what the nature of them was. Of course, we won't be able to read them probably. But all classified documents are not created equal. There's a big difference between, you know, nuclear code type information and a random briefing. Go ahead. I was just to say the nuclear arsenal stuff. Someone leaked that at some point after the raid that, oh, that's what they were going after. Trump had these nuclear documents.

But that sort of quieted down. And I'm not sure if it was debunked or what, but you don't hear about that anymore. Yeah, it's just a weird place to be in where you have a raid on a former president and you don't know why or what's going on. People aren't really talking about it. And the FBI, the kind of the message is, hey, just trust us on this one. But people really don't trust the FBI that much anymore after and the DOJ and these investigatory, you know, at the federal level. Let's talk about that a little bit. It's not just the Republican politicians, the elected officials who are criticizing the FBI who are.

are questioning the integrity of the FBI. You wrote about a new poll this week. America's trust in the FBI is eroding. That's right. This is a Rasmussen reports poll, which showed that 44% of surveyed Americans say that this raid we've been discussing has made them trust the FBI less.

So 44%. So coming up on half of Americans said this specific event has eroded their trust. 29% said it made them trust the FBI more, and then 23% said that, really care. It didn't make a difference. So, you know, when we talk about top level setting this rate aside, 50% of voters have a favorable impression of the FBI. Forty-six percent view the FBI unfavorably. So it's just really interesting that, you know, one of the top law enforcement agencies

has poll numbers that are similar to those of a national, like, presidential candidate. You know, 50% support, 46% being against you. That's a pretty standard, you know, something, you know, former President Obama might have had in his term when it comes to support. So something that a law enforcement agency could have poll numbers like a partisan politician is not good. It's really troubling. And I think, you know, I think a lot of Democrats trust it all, you know, law enforcement less because they didn't trust Trump.

And so that eroded some of their trust. And I think a lot of people on the right feel like conservatives and, you know, President Trump in particular have been poorly treated by these law enforcement agencies. I mean, do you think about things like some of these investigations like the Mueller investigation, really just it was talked about so much in the media like a smoking gun. And ultimately it kind of came up to be nothing. So much of the accusations and swirl around Russia, you know, it kind of just all came up empty.

And Americans were just, it was forced down their throat through the media for years that Trump was guilty. And then it kind of turned out to not be true. So, you know, people obviously don't trust the media. It's just not all connected to Trump either. Attorney General Merrick Garland last year directed the FBI to investigate parents who were protesting at school board meetings. Yes. Yeah.

So, you know, I can understand it. The FBI and the Justice Department overall has made some questionable, questionable decisions. Yeah, and usually, you know, these law enforcement agencies try to stay above the fray, but it seems in recent years they've gotten more involved in the political fray and the politicization. So maybe that's the lesson to take away here is that less political, either left or right will help restore some of that integrity. All right. Let's move on, Casey. This week marked the one-year anniversary of the chaotic and deadly withdrawal. And I'm reading your words here of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Republicans have a report that were a year later about that withdrawal and what it meant.

What can you tell us here? Yeah, I mean, of course, as you said, deadly, very sad. The state of Afghanistan now is not great. There's a lot of oppression from the Taliban. There's a lot of, you know, now who's controlling so much of the country, there's a lot of violence coming out of the Taliban, a lot of impression of, you know, young girls having difficulty, getting educated, things like that. So there's also a talk of a food crisis in Afghanistan. So, you know, there in Afghanistan, there's a lot of problems happening.

If you remember a year ago, the withdrawal was the top story for weeks and weeks. It actually did a lot. That withdrawal, if you look at Biden's poll numbers, I would say that was kind of the beginning of the end. You know, his support had waned a little bit. But when that withdrawal happened, I think that's what was one of the biggest, for the sharp decline over the next few months in his approval. So I think it didn't play well politically. But, you know, the report from House Foreign Affairs Committee found that about 800 American citizens were left behind, which is far more than the Biden administration said.

You know, they had said there was a much lower number. You know, there's reports of things like 100 or something like that. But 800 is what the House Republicans say, you know, maybe it's somewhere in the middle. Of course, it's pretty hard to verify that. but they're saying it's eight times higher that what Biden said. And then there's many thousands, maybe some of course say tens of thousands

of those people who are not necessarily U.S. citizens, but they were helping in Afghanistan. And now they're, I think, actually, this left there. And you know, you may care like, well, great, they're not citizens, who cares? But, you know, we went in there and we promised Afghan nationals

and other people, hey, if you help us with translating, if you help giving us intel, if you help, you help, you know, our agents and our military with different things, we'll take care of you. And then we just left him there. And, you know, where it gets out, if you're the Afghan guy who was helping out the U.S. military, the Taliban finds out about that. I'm sure you're in a lot of trouble. So who knows how many people have been punished for helping the U.S. but you may say, well, that's sad, but it had to happen. But it actually does a lot of damage to the reputation internationally.

So if people know, hey, don't help the U.S. military because they'll abandon you and just leave you, you know, at any time. So who would trust, you know, who would trust? if they know what happened to the Afghanis from at the hands to the Taliban because of what the U.S. did. So, of course, the 13 U.S. service members were killed tragically. And then as President Trump often points out, you know, $7 billion in military equipment was left behind. So, you know, a lot of, it was pretty messy. And it's been a year in Afghanistan a year later. It's not not in great shape.

Casey, you only have a couple minutes left. I want to try and squeeze in one more story. It's past the midpoint of August. Many American students are back in school, many more. We'll be returning to school here in the next week, next couple of weeks. The nation's capital, Washington, D.C.'s school district, still has a vaccine mandate for students. And that's drawing a lot of criticism. Tell us about this.

That's right. Most families returning to school this August are worried about school supplies, maybe school close. getting back, their kids back in the routine of waking up early. But for those parents in Washington, D.C., they're worried about vaccine mandates. And maybe they can't send their kids to school because Washington, D.C. is one of the only cities in the country that has a vaccine mandate for students. For kids, over 12 years old, if you want to go to school in D.C., you have to have a vaccine. So, you know, House Republican or, you know, many leading Republicans are calling on them to end this.

Congress has a measure of oversight of Washington, D.C. That's why they're getting involved in a kind of local issue with the DC City Council has put this in place. And so, you know, at the end of August, kids return to school, there's still a, you know, looks like a little over a week for them to repeal this. But one thing that's being pointed out here is, you know, I wrote about a poll recently that showed there's a third of parents who say they will not vaccinate their kids, pretty much under any circumstances. And then what we've seen is that minority kids are vaccinated at much lower rates. And so this policy is actually, I don't think intentionally, but it's really designed to keep minority kids from going to school. So it's not yet. I think it's really controversial.

I mean, D.C. was been pretty tough on the COVID mandates and stuff. But requiring 12 years to get vaccinated, maybe a bridge too far. We'll see if they stick with their mandate. And we all know, because study after study have shown the disaster that was remote learning. The learning loss. The learning loss suffered by all students, but particularly students in low-income families, in minority families. So if you force a child, like a 12-year-old child who's not vaccinated to spend the school year learning remotely, that gap in learning is only going to grow.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it also, it assumes that you have things like internet. A lot of, you know, poor families, they don't have internet or at least not reliable internet. So it just, it trickles down to the bottom in a negative way. And I know, you know, I know a couple kids, school age kids in D.C. And I ask them about remote learning and they hate it. And they do it.

You know, he does it. He's a 12-year-old boy. He lays in bed. on his pillow and he puts the computer right there and he falls asleep during class and he stays up all night playing video games. I mean, this is, you know, of course, anecdotal, but I think he's probably pretty representative of a lot of young kids. I think I would have done the same thing. Well, thank you for your insight, Casey, and all what's happening in our nation's capital. But that's all the time we have this week. A reminder to our listeners, you can find all of the

Center Squares podcast at America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America and Focus podcast for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McHaleb. We'll talk to you next week.