America's Talking - Episode 73: Trump Announces 2024 Presidential Bid & Pelosi to Step Down From House Leadership

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Join The Center Square’s Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss Pelosi’s decision to step down from House leadership as Senate Republicans pick McConnell to lead the GOP. Former President Donald Trump announces 2024 presidential bid. 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.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the American Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me again today is Casey Harper. The Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you today, Casey? Doing well, Dan. How are you?

Doing okay. I'm having some voice issues. I apologize ahead of time to our. our listeners, the weather hasn't helped. We are recording this podcast on Friday, November 18th, as a blizzard is about to bear down on parts of the Great Lakes and Northeast region. Places like Buffalo could get up to four feet of snow, four feet, not inches. Casey, you're not traveling to Buffalo or anywhere nearby this weekend. Yeah, I mean, I'm sadly going to have to cancel my long looked forward to trip to Buffalo this weekend, but I'll recover.

The NFL even moved the Cleveland Browns game at Buffalo and the Buffalo bills to Detroit to avoid the snowstorm. What's not to love about an NFL football game and a blizzard? Why move it? I agree. I love watching the games in the blizzard. And there's also something about holiday games in the snow. You know, the world coming up on Thanksgiving and Christmas. You know, I think a great holiday, you know, time game in the snow can be historic.

I mean, you see these clips, some of these things. things, you know, be pretty cool. So I say played football in pretty cold weather. And, you know, here I am. I turned out successful enough to be on a podcast with Dan McAulb. So who knows what could happen for them. Oh, there you go. There you go.

There you go. All right. Anyway, I was disappointed. I wanted to see that snowball. We do have some news to talk about Casey. So why don't we get into that more than a week after the election. We finally learned that Republicans have regained control of the U.S. House, Democrats will have a slim majority in the Senate. Republicans a slim majority in the House,

and they've already started planning for their majority. Tell us about that, Casey. Yeah, this is pretty interesting. There's some interesting signaling going on this week. I mean, as you know, in politics, they're signaling, and then there's actually what happens. So it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. But, you know, House Republicans, not all of them, but, you know, multiple House Republicans in leadership, just hours after the majority was called for Republicans and necessary 218 votes that they need to be in control of the House to divide the government, you know, keep the Senate Democrats from just passing whatever they want to slow down the Biden agenda.

They make clear that they're going to use this power to investigate not only Hunter Biden, but even, you know, the president himself and his family for how they were involved in Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings, how they may have benefited. And they're even, you know, strongly, you can say alleging or hinting or saying, adjusting, but that President Joe Biden was more involved than he has led on. And has, so, you know, there's, there's been a lot of talk about this ever since, you know, even in the previous election, actually part of the reason that, you know, Twitter came under such scrutiny is because a story about Hunter Biden and his laptop and some of these four business dealings came out

out just before the election and Twitter, you know, shut it down when the New York Post shared it. Facebook, I believe, shadow banned it. So they didn't totally remove it, but they just limited its scope. And that was actually, we later found out because of, you know, federal law enforcement warned them and told them to do that. And so there's questions, you know, part of this investigation is to the FBI, how, you know, how they may have played a role in all this. This is a wide-ranging investigation. It includes associates of the Biden family and includes, you know, the Treasury Secretary who Republicans say has withheld some financial reporting documents that may give more information into bank accounts and things that Hunter Biden used. So more and more information is coming out on this. And the more that comes out in reporting is shown the more truth there is to the story. It was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory or, you know, Russian disinformation. But, you know, now the New York Times, which initially dismissed some of this reporting has verified the existence of the laptop. So you may say, I mean, why are we picking on Hunter Biden?

And, you know, why does this matter? I think what, you know, House Republicans would say is this matters because, the Biden family could be compromised and there could be some kind of blackmail or leverage against the president, which was a big concern when Donald Trump was president. There was a big concern that based on the dossier, which turned out to be totally, you know, fake and made up, but that some Russians or someone had some leverage or blackmail on the president, which of course could be really powerful to have blackmail against the president. So that's like a quick summary of the whole 100 Biden scandal. We can add more into it. I think House Republicans have other things that they want to

want to address, but this is the first thing they really went out on a press conference and brought up. And it's kind of one of, you know, they're going to be limited in what kind of laws or things they can pass because of the divided government, because their house majority is going to be so slim. So things like investigations, things like this are going to be probably the focus over the next two years. Interesting stuff. And now that they do have control of the house, they'll have subpoena powers to be able to use their essentially bully pulpit. to gather more information, require maybe even members of Biden's family to testify before Congress. So it's going to be an interesting couple of years. What else is going to be interesting about it, Casey, is that Nancy Pelosi, powerful House Democrat from California, is not going to be part of leadership of the new Democratic minority in the House.

What did she tell us this week? Yeah, I mean, this has been a long-witted announcement. There's been a couple of false starts where, you know, we thought Nancy Pelosi was going to step down. And then if she didn't, there's been jockeying from other House Democrats and who's going to replace her. But she announced yesterday that she is stepping down. She's 82 years old.

So that's the day and that's your new target. 82, you can step down from leadership. But that's what, you know, or you're not as tough as Nancy. Nancy is actually pretty tough. I mean, comparing her and President Biden, I mean, I think, you know, one of the big criticisms of Biden has been how much his age has shown. But I don't think it's really shown for Nancy. She's been pretty durable.

But she's hanging up the hat now. She said she will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. This is a quote from her, the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect. So she's actually going to keep representing her district in California, but is handing off, handing off leadership. And she's been a part of leadership for more than 20 years or for about 20 years. Anyway, in fact, she was the first female House Speaker.

So it made history there. I don't know that Republicans are going to miss her in her leadership role, but she'll still be around for a couple of years representing San Francisco. That's right. And a person to watch and all this is Akeem Jeffries. He's a New York, a New York House Democrat. at and he's expected to, you know, it's expected to as such as difficult language, but he's the one that everyone's looking at as a very possible replacement for her. So keep your eye on Hakeem Jeffries and we'll see, we'll see if he's able to secure, replace it.

Because as you said, I mean, Nancy Pelosi was almost two decades in this role. So if you get it and you do it well, it can be almost a lifetime appointment. And in the senior chamber in the U.S. Senate, Democrats secured 50 of 100 seats. Republicans currently control 49 with the runoff election still to be held in Georgia to determine who will fill that final seat in the Senate. Regardless, because Democrats have 50 now, and even if Herschel Walker, the Republican in Georgia wins, It would be 50-50, again, just as has been these past two years. But with the Biden administration and Vice President Kamala Harris in office, the vice president has the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. So Democrats will be in control of the Senate.

On the minority side, though, in the Republican Party, there was a mini battle, I would say, for leadership there, who ended up winning. Yeah, you're right. There was some tussling, some last-minute. battling to see if Mitch McConnell's mantle as a leader of Senate Republicans could be rested away from him. But it was unfruitful. You know, Rick Scott, the Republican Center from Florida, who leads to National Republican Study Committee, which, you know, it does research.

It does a lot of campaign work. He tried to challenge McConnell, but it was just not very much. He got a couple votes, but it didn't really stand much of a chance. And he sent a letter to, you know, his colleague. which I looked at, and he raised a lot of concerns. He said he really took issue of feeling that McConnell didn't present a legislative agenda saying, hey, to the American people, hey, if you elect a Republican majority, here's what we're going to do over the next two years.

You know, we didn't hear a lot about any kind of legislative plan, any legislative agenda. And so he's, you know, said that some of the blame for Republicans poor showing in the midterm elections could be placed at the feet of McConnell because of that. you know, Rick Scott also, he did more explicitly just say, hey, these elections weren't great. He brought up some issues like taking on communist China, holding the FBI and IRS accountable, protecting Social Security and Medicare as some of the legislative things that he would have liked to talk about. And he did get an ally in Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is actually very vocally opposed to McConnell. He said on his podcast, this quote, Mitch would rather be leader.

than have a Republican majority. If there's a Republican who can win who's not going to support Mitch, the truth of the matter is he'd rather the Democrat win. And so, you know, of course, he's saying here that Mitch cares more about maintaining his power than getting any legislative wins. You know, risky legislative action is risky.

You know, bold legislative action is risky. It can cost you a majority. I mean, we saw that with how Democrats had the battle over Obamacare and then lost, you know, big seats. So it's interesting to see. I think some of his party in fighting might be, you know, not that interesting to our, so some of our listeners is inside baseball. But it's important to keep an eye on these relationships because, you know,

leadership doesn't forget things like this. Like they're going to, you know, McConnell's going to remember that Tech Cruz did this. You don't remember the Rick Scott did this. It affects committee appointments. It affects future relationships. But, you know, Mitch McConnell is getting up there. He's not 82 like Nancy Pelosi. But he's getting up there in age.

he's actually he's 80 years old as looked it up so these guys are going to have to be replaced soon and that could be a new era for both parties right and after the republicans disappointing performance in the midterm elections yes they did retake control of the house they did not retake control of the senate many were because of the economy because the record high inflation and gas prices under president Biden and just because of history usually at the midterms, the party that is not in control of the White House sees huge gains. Republicans did see some gains in the House, but not the red wave that everyone was expecting. There was a lot of heat on McConnell. So he did win a political victory this week after the challenge from Rick Scott. Rick Scott, by the way, was boosted.

Well, he wasn't boosted very much, I guess, similar to the midterms by President Trump. who supported his leadership call. Speaking of former President Trump, though, he made a big announcement this week. You got to watch his speech. Casey, he's going to run for president again. What did you think of the speech and what your early analysis? I felt like I was back in 2015, and it was like I was in a time machine back just watching Trump give his opening announcement. It was very interesting.

He hit on so many of the same points, the same themes. It almost felt like word for word was similar to his campaign speeches in the 2016 election. And he talked about kind of this underdog theme about taking on corruption, taking on the establishment, some of the things that I think did propel Trump to victory. Of course, he announced his candidacy for 2024. He said, this is a quote, in order to make America great and glorious again. I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States. So I don't know if it's going to be Make America Great and Glorious. Again, that's like MAGA with 2G's.

We'll have to keep it on that. But he gave the speech from Mar-a-Lago, of course, in Palm Beach, Florida to a room of supporters. I thought the speech, you know, some of the feedback was that, you know, people were giving to the speech was that it was kind of lower energy than normal. But, you know, just an interesting, you know, way to look at it with Trump because, I think Trump is almost high energy to a fault sometimes. And if he toned back his rhetoric and was a little bit less divisive than maybe that could actually help him, I think that might be welcomed by some voters. At the same time, I find it hard to believe that there's people in America, voters in America who haven't already kind of made up their mind about Trump, whether they love him or hate him.

So it's going to be interesting, you know, seeing a president who ran, lost, ran one, ran lost, and now going to run again. I don't know. I'll be curious to hear what you thought. I know you followed the speech as well, but he hit on these themes about America being taken advantage of, about our terrible foreign policy, about how the economy was great. He really hit on how great the economy was during his administration, which is true. The economy did really well. And now, just in two years, how we've kind of fallen from that high spot that he says he brought us to. So I think one of the noteworthy things for me was he did not. mention or criticize any of his potential Republican opponents in what could be a very interesting primary season. Of course, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been a rising star in the Republican

party. Florida really was the only state where this midterm red wave happened. DeSantis won easily against his Democratic opponent, Charlie Chris. even one, you know, traditionally democratic areas, areas such as Miami and Dade County, where there's a huge Latino population. Trump in recent weeks has been criticizing DeSantis because of his popularity, because he's been rumored to be a potential presidential candidate in 2024. But in his speech this week, announcing his run for presidency,

Trump left people like DeSantis and other potential opponents, former vice president, Mike Pence, for example, left him alone during this one. Is that a sign that maybe Trump has turned the page? No. No, I don't think so. But I think Trump did get a lot of negative feedback from, not that, you know, it's unclear whether negative feedback really affects his decisions because he's gotten plenty over the years and has remained pretty steadfast in some of his positions and ways of handling things. But he got a lot of negative feedback for attacking DeSantis, you know, right before Election Day. And now with the Georgia runoff coming in December, I think a lot of, you know, people within the party, maybe some people around Trump are saying, hey, I get it. But can you just wait until after Georgia?

I mean, you're going to have plenty of time. You're going to have over, you know, over a year and a half to keep attacking DeSantis. Can you just let us get through Georgia and try to win this Senate seat? You know, they felt like his attack on DeSantis was really unwise right before the midterm elections because the distract. direction. Why are you going to create division within the political party attack a Republican who's up for re-election? You know, so I think some people are just saying, hey, can you hold off a little bit longer? Trump did announce very early. So I think he's going to have to decide how much his campaign is about his ideas and how much it's about attacking his opponent. And I think that's a balance Trump has had to strike in every election he's been in.

He did really, in 2016, he did a really great job of destroying his primary opponents. But he didn't spend that much time on him. He talked a lot about his message, and then he would throw a comment about Little Marco. And when they would attack him in the debates, he would destroy them. But he always acted kind of in response. Someone would attack him, and then he would shut him down. And then he did the same thing with Hillary. Hillary would attack him for us, you know, it's a good thing.

You wouldn't be in control of the law in this country, and he destroyed her because you'd be in jail. So I think Trump has always been a really good on the defense with these one-liners and comebacks and nicknaming opponents while staying focused on. on his message, which can be a really compelling message. But what we're seeing here is kind of the opposite, which is him going on the offensive against DeSantis. And I think that could play poorly for him because people like DeSantis a lot. And it kind of plays into this image of Trump is a bully or Trump even is being insecure

or something. So I think Trump would be better served, really focusing on his message. And then when the time comes, when DeSantis starts attacking him, and that time probably will come, then he can respond back with what he hopes will be a crushing blow like he did so well in previous elections. So I think the fighting, you know, Trump, I don't think Trump is ever going to run an election that it doesn't get pretty, you know, on the verge of nasty with attacks. So I don't think he's really a changed man in that regard.

It's just kind of, it's just a little early right now. Yeah, I don't either. Of course, Trump is up there in age, just like President Biden, Nancy, Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, folks, we just, we talked about earlier during the American Focus podcast. He's 76 years old right now in 2024 when the presidential election is. He'd be 78. And if he won re-election, he'd be 82 by the time that term in office would be over. So, and President Biden himself has said he's going to, he'll decide early next year, whether or not he's going to seek a second term. So it is going to.

going to be an interesting. That is interesting to think that we could have all the leadership in this country be over 80 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right, we got time for just a couple more stories here, Casey. We mentioned inflation earlier when it came to the midterms. New inflation report came out this week. Producer prices rose again in October. Where are we at here? Yeah, we can try to keep this one short and sweet, but we just, in some ways, it's more the same, which is higher prices. The producer price index that was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that those prices rose 0.2% last month. That's part of an 8% rise over the last 12 months. So 8% rise in the last 12 months is a lot.

0.2% rise in the last month is not a big jump. So the prices are still rising, but they're rising at a, much slower rate. So, you know, if you did that, if you took that 0.2%, you know, annualize it, you'd be at like 2.2%, which would be, which would be, you know, not too bad inflation rate. So I think that we are seeing these prices slow down. You know, some things, though, have still risen a lot faster. Things like energy and food are still up so much more in the last, you know, 12 months than

a lot of other things. And so it's interesting because you can, you know, the prices of a lot of other goods and services might go down and lower these overall numbers. But if your food and your gas is markedly higher than it was last year, that's going to impact you a lot more and impact your day-to-day life a lot more than if, you know, the price of lawnmowers or something going down has offset some of that increase. It's like, hey, what you really care about is food, energy, rent, rent prices, you know, have definitely been on the rise in the last year. So I think the pain is slowing down, but it's definitely still there. And we haven't seen any decline or anything like that. So something we'll keep an eye on. Bottom line is Americans are paying significantly more.

Right. For various items, you mentioned food. Of course, next week is Thanksgiving week at the Center Square. We reported also this week. You know, there's the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. is upwards of 15% more expensive this year than last year. Of course, heading into the holiday season with Christmas and New Year's and Hanukkah and other holidays like that. The price of gifts are going to be significantly more expensive.

We've seen plenty of polling recently and months back that Americans are making tough decisions about what they're purchasing because of inflation. But I do want to touch on one more story. We only have a couple minutes left here, Casey. President Biden this week made some interesting comments about Roe v. Wade, of course, this past summer. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a prior Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, essentially handing the decisions about abortion and abortion restrictions back to the states. Biden had been saying he wants to codify Roe v. Wade in federal law, but he backtracked a little bit this week. That's right. He pulled back on his campaign pledge and what a lot of Democrats were talking about on the campaign trail, which is weaponizing the frustration of a lot of Democratic voters around the Supreme Court's decision on this issue. And they said, you know, multiple times on the

campaign trail that if they get the vote, or they get the seats, that they are going to put in place these federal abortion protections, right? Put these into federal law to replace the Supreme Court precedent that was removed. But, you know, Biden was asked about that on Monday. I said, hey, you know, are you going to do this now? And he said, this is what he said. It's a quote. I don't think they can expect much of anything other than we're going to maintain our positions. I'm not going to get into more questions. I shouldn't even answer your question. And so he said, I don't think there's enough votes to, um, codify something unless something unusual happens in the House.

And then he went on to say, I think we're going to come very close in the House, but I don't think we're going to make it. This was on Monday, of course, before the House was called for Republicans. So, you know, I think, I don't think that there's anything too nefarious going on here from Democrats. You know, he was, and from President Biden, even Biden was clear that they would need the votes in the House and Senate if they were going to do something on abortion. But I think it can probably feel a little bit like whiplash for Democratic voters who felt like they did pretty good in the midterms who said, you know, Democrats promised so aggressively that they, if they got, you know, power that they would do something out of abortion, they did pretty well in the midterms, better than a lot of people expected. And then just immediately, you know, days, a couple of days later said, yeah, we're just going to

maintain our positions. We're not going to do anything. So I think there's probably a little frustration on the Democrat side that there's nothing happening here. You can be sympathetic to Biden and his colleagues because they probably don't have the votes. But it's something we'll keep an eye on. And at least for now, it looks like Roe v. Wade and abortion laws aren't going to be changed too much, which probably just sets them up to be used again by Democrats to rally their base in 2024. As usual, Casey, thank you for your insight on these issues going on in Washington, D.C., that affects Americans across the country.

That is all the time we have this week. A reminder to our listeners. You can find all of the Center Squares podcast in America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. there is no cost. This has been the American Focus podcast for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKalib. We'll talk to you next week.