Pod Save America - Should Democrats Save Kevin McCarthy?

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Congress avoids a government shutdown after Kevin McCarthy caves to Democrats at the last possible minute—and now Matt Gaetz is trying to strip McCarthy of the speakership as a result. Will Democrats bail McCarthy out? Donald Trump begins his fraud trial with the unique legal strategy of threatening the judge, Joe Biden frames the 2024 election as extremism vs. democracy, and Gavin Newsom appoints Laphonza Butler as California's newest Senator. Later, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal joins the show to talk about House Democrats' strategy as the Speaker drama unfolds. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.Join the World-Wide Digital Experience "Pod Save America Live from DC" on October 19 at 8 PM ET with Co-host Symone Sanders and Special Guests Senator John Fetterman, Chef Jose Andres, and Jennifer Carroll Foy.Tickets: https://www.moment.co/psa

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm fire exit user Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm fire exit user Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vittorio. On today's show, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal joins to talk about whether Democrats will join Matt Gaetz's plan to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Donald Trump is in court for his fraud trial, making all kinds of threats.

Joe Biden is framing the 2024 election as extremism versus democracy. And Gavin Newsom appoints LaFfonza Butler as California's newest senator. But first, Congress has averted a government shutdown for now because Kevin McCarthy caved to Democrats at the last possible minute. 126 House Republicans joined 209 of their Democratic colleagues to keep the government funded at current spending levels for the next 45 days. Donald Trump and most Republicans had been demanding huge cuts to everything from health care to education, more immigration restrictions and all kinds of other crazy stuff. They got none of that, though they were able to keep additional funding for Ukraine out of the deal, at least for now.

President Biden said he's confident the Ukraine aid will pass and told Republicans to pass the full budget deal they agreed to last summer. Stop playing games. Get this done. I'm sick and tired of the brinksmanship. And so are the American people. I've been doing this, you all point out to me a long time. I've never quite seen a Republican Congress or any Congress act like this. of Republican Congress or any Congress act like this. Enough is enough is enough. This is not that complicated. The brinkmanship has to end.

There's no excuse for another crisis. Consequently, I strongly urge my Republican friends in Congress not to wait. Don't waste time as you did all summer. Pass a year-long budget agreement. Honor the deal we made a few months ago. Joe's angry. I like it. Works better on audio because you can't see the ice cream cone.

There's no ice cream cone. There's no ice cream cone. He's at a podium. What do you think happened here? Why do you think McCarthy caved at the last minute to avoid a shutdown that almost everyone thought would happen? I mean, like Friday heading into the weekend was like it was like most certainly most likely. What do you think happened? It's the the thing that I don't understand is McCarthy clearly felt like he needed to prove to his caucus that there was no way out of this without Democratic votes. And a lot of the assumption, a lot of the assumptions were that, OK, in order for that to happen, there has to be a shutdown. There has to be some pain before that can happen. If for whatever reason, McCarthy decided he didn't need to wait for the

shutdown to actually transpire to have the vote. And I think part of it might just be that it was becoming increasingly clear that no matter what he did, there was no avoiding this motion to vacate coming in the next week. Yeah, seems right. I mean, he blinked. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, I think he originally thought that maybe he could pass something through the House with all Republican votes. And then, you know, it obviously wouldn't pass the Democratic held Senate and the White House, but then he could trigger a shutdown and everyone could argue about it. I think he realized last week after several votes that he couldn't get anything past the House with just Republican votes. And then he realized he was going to get jammed by the Senate because McConnell was going to throw in with Democrats in the Senate

to pass a bipartisan funding bill. So if there was a shutdown, it would have been McCarthy versus not only Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, but Mitch McConnell and a bunch of Senate and House Republicans who wanted to pass a bipartisan funding bill. And a bipartisan funding bill that would have included funding for Ukraine. Yeah. And I think he realized, look, it's, you know, probably hard to win a shutdown fight when it's just a Republican bill passing through the House. But when you can't even get something passed through the House, it can be really hard to win a shutdown. They couldn't even get a defense appropriations bill

passed. Right. They can't do the basics of anything. Yeah, they couldn't get anything done. How big of a problem, Tommy, is the lack of additional Ukraine funding? I mean, I think it's a big deal for Ukraine. It's obviously existential. But I think that, well, the broader context is I think the I think the US has passed something like 75 billion for Ukraine in aid so far. And Biden wants another 24 billion, which is a lot of money. And for a while, there was a broad, pretty bipartisan support and polls for supporting Ukraine and giving them, you know, stuff, guns, et cetera. And now that polling has eroded over time. There's a CNN poll in August that found a majority of Americans opposed more USA for Ukraine. So I always thought that an up or down vote in Congress would probably pass and probably pass in a bipartisan way. There's more support for Ukraine in Congress maybe than in the broader electorate. But I'm not sure how you get an up or down vote right now in the house

and and matt gates seems to think that mccarthy's like gates or geitz what are we going with these days i thought it was gates is it guys i don't know gates i just all i see is the botox in his forehead it seems so strong that's my opinion um but so defamation training this uh you know what to call you have to save the joke now we're gonna get sued for that i suspect that you could get a bipartisan majority if you had an up or down vote on some sort of like a reasonable amount of funding but you know i don't know and mccarthy gates geitz thinks there's a secret deal that the white house made biden seems to suggest there might be one that the white house won't comment on it but i just don't know how you get to that vote right because the strategy was let's pair ukraine money with disaster relief money and other popular stuff and force everybody

to vote for it. But now they passed all the disaster relief money. So what do you do? Yeah. Border security money? I'm not sure. Yeah. I don't think McCarthy, he's got enough problems. He doesn't want to be talking about any secret side Ukraine deal right now. He's got, by the way, how can he keep all these secret deals aside? It's like, he's just, he's like a Mrs. Doubt doubtfire at the end he's just running in and out changing in the bathroom

telling biden one thing telling the republicans the other another thing it's not yeah i mean look i think the problem becomes if the next potential government shutdown fight hinges on ukraine aid you could then see m and the House Republicans shutting down the government over that. Yeah. And well, and McCarthy was accusing Democrats of shutting down the government to support Ukraine on the Sunday shows, which royally pissed off a whole lot of Democrats. Yeah. And, and well, I, I think that there is, you're right that the Congress is behind where the country has moved on the issue. There is still a majority, certainly in the Senate, there's still a majority in the house that if it came to a vote would support Ukraine aid.

So it's the same dynamic that keeps playing out. If a bill if a bill came to the floor, there's a majority for it. But there's not a majority among Republicans for it. Right. Right. And the support for supporting Ukraine has slipped precipitously among Republicans in particular. But of course, there's also not a majority among Republicans for any kind of funding bill right now. So that might save the Ukraine aid in the end. Because you need Democratic votes.

Yeah, right. And the dynamic continues to be the same. The only bill that can pass the House and the Senate is a bipartisan bill with more Democrats in the House than Republicans in the House. Well, the other thing that might save Ukraine aid and avert another government shutdown is Matt Gaetz's antics here. Yeah. Because now the fun really begins. Not only are we going to have another potential shutdown fight in 45 days, but we have a fight over who should be Speaker of the House.

That's about to happen right now. This week, Kevin McCarthy had a choice between shutting down the government or potentially losing his job as speaker. And sure enough, Gates said he plans to file a motion to vacate this week. Here he is on the House floor and talking to reporters afterwards. It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy's lunch money in every negotiation. What commitments were made to President Biden to continue the spending of President Biden in exchange for doing things for President Biden? It is becoming increasingly clear who the Speaker of the House already works for. And it's not the

Republican conference. If Kevin McCarthy works for Democrats and utilizes Democrats in order to keep power, that would be consistent with everything we've seen from him. Have you spoken to Mr. President Trump about this? I have. And what was his advice to you? I think I'm gonna keep that between the two of us. Have you talked to Speaker- Oh man, this is fun he is this is fun let's just let's just enjoy this moment of fun before the chaos continues and it somehow redounds to a terrible catastrophe that we're not quite yet understanding at this moment very fun hey look matt gates is a pig in shit he is loving every fucking moment of this

and then he's going to the floor and giving speeches that you could just copy and paste into Democrats. He's cutting ads for the Biden campaign. I love it. Thank you, Matt Gaetz. It's unbelievable. I mean, in kind contribution. By the way, it is pretty remarkable where we're at, where the current speaker of the

House, like we're a nerd to it in so many ways, but it is a bit unusual that it is just a thing that Republicans and Democrats all agree. Kevin McCarthy is a liar. They call him a liar with an L. It is wild. Yeah, because he is. Well, and also, I mean, not to defend Kevin McCarthy here, but he kind of had to lie because he put himself in a terrible situation. And the root of this is in order for him to become speaker, to get the job after 15 votes, he said, OK, we'll insert this rule into the agreement where you only it only takes one member to trigger a motion to vacate vote, a vote to get rid of the speaker. And so that's his fucking fault. Yeah, that's why you should have no sympathy for him, because this guy so desperately wanted this job that he made it impossible to govern the house. I think it was Carl Hulse of the New York Times

said that McCarthy likes being speaker so much that he'll just like post up in public places and take photos with tours because he just like likes being speaker and being in the speaker's lobby and showing off. Like Tom Hanks sitting on that Forrest Gump bench. Monkey's paw. That's what he careful you wish

for Kevin because now you got it but also it's like tommy thank you for letting the people listening to this show know that they shouldn't feel bad for kevin mccarthy is something that they were all doing listen there's a lot of defense i just said this is why he had to lie yeah it was a policy was he gonna have he's gonna keep his job he's gonna lie to biden and then he's gonna do the mrs doubtfire thing yeah he had to lie it was the only way to get the thing he wanted right yeah exactly which is power uh and i will just say it will be um difficult for republicans to still make the argument that joe biden is uh is feeble because uh he keeps taking kevin mccarthy's lunch money i think they'll still do it though yeah they'll take a run at it i'll

take they'll take a run at it they took a run at it. All right. So what does Gates need to succeed here? And what are the chances that he ultimately does? So one member, so he can force the motion to vacate vote. That just takes, he can do that alone. Winning that vote, though, will take a majority. So I don't know if he's put it forward yet as of this recording. I don't think so. But then basically the leadership has two days to bring up this motion to vacate deal. There's a couple ways McCarthy could try to kill it. They could basically say, should the House be considering

this right now? Yes or no, and vote it down that way. They could vote on a motion to table the bill, but again, you need a majority to do that. So in both cases, Democrats have a lot of power because they could vote to bail out McCarthy, they could vote to get rid of McCarthy, or they could vote present, which changes the math and makes it easier for him to win. So this is where all the kind of machinations start. And if I got any of that wrong, please blame Jake Sherman at Punchbowl. Yeah, he needs a majority of those present and voting, which means that if someone votes present, the threshold goes down. And then, so if every Democrat, here's one way to think about it. If every Democrat votes to dump McCarthy,

which they normally would in a situation like this. Normally they'd go for Huckabee and Jeffries. Should Kevin McCarthy be speaker? We all agree. No. So if every Democrat votes to dump McCarthy, then Gates would only need five Republicans to join him in voting to oust McCarthy, which he very likely has. Eli Crane, Victoria Sparks, Andy Biggs, Bob Good. He's already got a couple.

People think he can get up to 20. The kooky caucus. He had the same group of people that took us to so many ballots to get McCarthy in there in the first place. He doesn't have Chip Roy, doesn't have Byron Donald. Yeah, some of them are getting mad at his antics. So he's losing some of them, but he probably has enough if he has all the democrats but the point the time he made stands which is if the democrats all vote together they basically decide whether or not kevin mccarthy

remains a speaker so next question should the democrats bail out kevin mccarthy and if they do what do you think they can get out of the deal love it so i asked i think it's worth just yeah i interviewed jayapal i interviewed jayapal about this she didn't get into the specifics the other thing i asked was also just sort of like is this about so there's the vote to oust and then there's what happens after a speaker is oust right there's like a few different places at which the democrats will have power in this like she really didn't want to get into it except to say that the only way she thought Democrats would go along with any kind of plan would be if there was actual rule changes that were written down that Democrats would have, like written extractions, not a promise from McCarthy, not like a side deal, not like we'll do what, you know, not all the kinds of deals he's been making over the last year yeah none of which he has honored so right exactly no ious from that guy but also mccarthy's problem

is that gates can just put forward the motion to vacate again and again and again and he has threatened to do so so you're right you could like the only path forward that seems to fix anything is some sort of grand bargain as they might say in say in D.C. Yum, yum, yum. That includes rule changes. Are Simpson and or Bowles still alive? A joke for three people in this room. They put together some sort of rule changes that, I don't know, disempower the right-wing fringe in the House, make it more governable for McCarthy, make it more governable. We give Democrats a little bit more power, but I don't know.

Is that really on the table? Yeah, so there's a whole menu of possible concessions. It seems like there's some fantasy politics being played here i saw someone a lot of west wing maybe maybe they'll say that uh the the nrcc is not allowed to spend any money on uh you know against vulnerable democrats and races in 2024 it's like okay yeah that'll work sure yeah and donald trump has to be quiet for six months. Can't say a word. I'd rather him say a lot. Politico has said that one thing that's not negotiable, forcing McCarthy to stick to the spending caps he inked with Biden in May. That, Dem say, isn't a concession.

It's a given. So that is interesting. And it does make more like you're not going to save Kevin McCarthy if then he's not going to agree to the fucking deal he agreed to with joe biden in the summer on spending but then if i guess if mccarthy does that then he's i don't i don't know what happens here i don't the only thing that's confusing about like okay so they make a deal on spending every mccarthy goes against that deal for what he was trying to pass through the house but mcc McCarthy has to go against that deal to get anything passed through the House

because of the promises he made to the House Republicans. And what actually ends up passing doesn't violate the deal. It's just a continuation of the deal. So in a sense, what McCarthy ends up actually putting through the House in the end does uphold the deal he made with Biden. Before, it's just that everyone's claiming he broke his deal when he tried to pass the House bill, right? I don't know. I didn't quite follow that. So everyone's saying McCarthy's a liar because McCarthy went back in the deal he did

with Biden. Yes. But he's only- He tried to go back. He tried, but he tried to go back. But McCarthy does a lot of things to demonstrate what can and can't work, right? Like no matter what McCarthy passed through the House, what McCarthy passed through the House, what McCarthy passed through the House was never gonna pass through the Senate. It was a messaging bill for a fight. So in some sense, couldn't McCarthy have just been doing what he did

to get a Republican bill through ultimately to uphold the deal because whatever he was gonna pass through both the Senate and the House would have uphold the deal anyway. Sure, maybe, but the only thing that matters here is if he ends up agreeing, like to keep his job, if he ends up saying, OK, if you guys support me, Democrats as speaker,

then I will agree to the Biden deal and at those spending levels and we'll just, you know, keep the government open and we'll keep it open at the levels that Joe Biden and I agree to. That's it. Then Matt Gaetz could say, OK, I'm going to do another motion to vacate. Then maybe ideally, then more Republicans would would join him at Gates because, oh, he just did this. But I think at that point, like if you've got all the Democrats on board saving McCarthy is one block, then like I don't think that Gates will have the votes to oust McCarthy. then like, I don't think that Gates will have the votes to oust McCarthy. Well, the other thing, yeah. He won't have a majority. And it's also why I think that any kind of deal can't just be about budgeting or policy.

It has to be about genuine concessions and committees and votes and actual power sharing, which is the thing that Jayapal talked about as well. It can't just be to, you uphold some policy deal we made a year ago. He already made that deal. He should be living by it anyway. And Matt Gates, I mean, he's an arsonist. He hates Kevin McCarthy. He's getting a lot of attention and probably get run for governor of Florida. So real fiscal conservatives are

furious at him that they had a deal that cut domestic spending by 8% and got a bunch of border funding. And they said no to that. And now, so, but like the trap here for Matt Gaetz is he will either get rid of McCarthy or he'll say McCarthy is a pawn of the Democrats. And that's the only way he is still in power. So it's not a great setup for the speaker. Yeah. I do think this does. It changes the dynamics of the next shutdown fight just because I think Democrats have so much more leverage now.

I mean, we always had leverage because Republicans only control one house of Congress. And it wasn't even it was there wasn't even a majority of Republicans who wanted to have a shutdown. So Kevin McCarthy never really had that much leverage except for get out of this anyway. But I do think that if he wants to keep his job, then he will have to agree to keep the government open and work with Democrats to pass something. Right. And as part of that, you can come up with some kind of rule change because you'd have a majority that would be able to say you need Matt Gaetz plus 10 other assholes to do a... Right. And McCarthy might be banking on the fact that Democrats will look at the menu of options they have in front of them for who could come next and decide that a lying asshole who will say anything is actually their best option. Because he has no principles.

Give him the votes anyway. No principles. How nice to have a... We can look at them. He'll do anything. Now, for Democrats, I think you'd want to make a promise can look at them he'll do anything now for democrats i think uh you'd want to make a promise to maybe save mccarthy uh once or twice or you know just to get through the government shutdown thing because like you were saying tommy down the road if mccarthy is really

if mackie is able to prove that mccarthy is now just a quote-unquote tool of democrats then you could start seeing more and more Republicans as time goes on over the next several months, over the next year, say like, all right, we're done with Kevin McCarthy. And then maybe you trigger another motion to vacate someday down the road. And the Democrats are like, oh, I'm not saving you twice. Right. That's why I don't, I sort of feel like any real deal would have to change the motion to vacate threshold and some other structural things to make sure that we're just not trapped in this endless cycle of matt gates being mad or man imagine that that they take away the power of motion motion to vacate then the republicans would be so pissed it'd be fun right yeah that's the other thing about this

it's like we we hear a lot about the like the the republicans and vulnerable districts and then we hear a lot about the freedom caucus but there is this soft middle between the two that for all we know, this is like completely anathema to them and a reason they would say, I'm done with Kevin McCarthy. It's time to move on to Steve Scalise or whoever. Yeah, I think McCarthy controls like 200 votes and the rest are kind of nightmares up for grabs. I just don't know. No one has floated an alternative for who could do a better job, right?

Everyone talks about Steve Scalise, but he's doing some medical treatment. So they're kind of waiting for him to get through that before they'll talk about alternatives. Even Matt Gaetz won't talk about alternatives. Tom Emmer has been floated around too. He's the majority. He's the whip now. Donald Trump. Even Steve Scalise even is out there.

Like even his like, everyone, even Steve Scalise's statement today was like so lukewarm. Like I remain committed to Kevin McCarthy. Yeah. Well, he needs to be ready for stepping in. Ready for action. What do you guys think the call between Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz was like? Good question. I mean, Trump only cares about harming Biden, right? So he's like shut down the government, blow up the economy, do whatever it takes to harm this guy.

And it's not like he's got a lot of loyalty to Kevin. No. He dumped that guy in a second yeah and they're certainly not you know strategizing think playing like thinking through the moves that's doing whip counts yeah yeah they don't know the names uh speaking of trump he is in court again defending himself against a lawsuit brought by the state of new york that accuses him of committing business fraud last week the judge delivered a delivered a surprise pretrial ruling that Trump is liable for fraud, and the judge has already revoked the business licenses for Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel. Now the judge is going to decide the rest of Trump's punishment. Attorney

General Tish James is asking for a $250 million fine and a ban on Trump running any business in the state of New York. Trump's lawyer told the judge that he will hear testimony from Donald Trump during this trial. But apparently Trump couldn't wait to take the stand to lay out his defense. Here he is during a court break on Monday. This is a judge that should be disbarred.

This is a judge that should be out of office. This is a judge that some people say could be charged criminally for what he's doing. He's interfering with an election, and it's a disgrace. Thank you very much. What do you guys think about the deft legal strategy of threatening the judge who's solely responsible for deciding the fate of your business empire? I was trying to, like, why does Trump matter? Because of the substance of what's at issue I was like trying to like, why does Trump matter because of the substance

of what's at issue and the threat to his livelihood or just the fact that he had to sit in a chair and pay attention for a couple hours? Just absolutely bored of his fucking mind

getting angrier and angrier and angrier and he's so hungry. to show up. Like, well, I don't even know. And also there was, there's,

I didn't expect there to be camera footage. There's camera footage. Oh, there's a great, there's a great moment where the camera comes around and the judge basically does like, hey how you doing and someone said it to like the credits of some 90s sitcom yeah i mean i think this one speaks to the fact that trump never has

a legal strategy these days he has a political strategy where he wins pre-election uh and that solves all of his legal problems because otherwise being, being like, hey, see that guy over there who controls my fate? Fuck that guy. It's a really, really weird thing for him to do. You didn't have the balls to hurt me. It's like most people grovel before a judge deciding their fate. I'm not guilty.

He's guilty. He should be charged. Also, last week, Trump was like, in one of his truths, was something like, I need a judge, federal, state, anywhere. Please, some judge help me. It's weird that, you know, Trump is very mad that he's not getting a jury trial, but that's because his lawyers forgot or just decided not to request for one. Yeah, they didn't ask.

So now it's in the hands of the, his fate is in the hands of this judge that he hates. The judge was like, no one asked for a jury. That's why I'm deciding. You could ask for a jury. No one's asked for one yeah they didn't know it's in the hands of the his fate is in the hands of this judge that he hates the judge was like uh no one asked for a jury that's why i'm deciding you could ask for a jury no one's asked for one and also just i mean like i don't know i just didn't fully internalize how quickly this trial was going to start and like the fact that track it is fairness hard to keep track of all the trials it is it is but like you know they it was the judge issues this surprise ruling say say, hey, I've looked at what you've both presented. We can go straight to damages here. Like we, this is, this is open and shut. And so who knows what they were preparing for,

but it must be quite a shock to go from thinking, oh, I'm going to be in a trial where I get to at least try to assert innocence that the outcome is in doubt. And now it's purely about how much he owes and how much the damage is. And that is, that's trapped. He's trapped there. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that these lawyers are gonna let Donald Trump testify. I saw something that perhaps when the defense lawyer told the judge

that they would be hearing testimony from Donald Trump, it might be the testimony that was already prerecorded in the earlier stages. Yeah. In this trial. And maybe they'll just play it for the judge. I don't know why they would need to because the judge could have already watched it. But like putting Donald Trump on the stand, I mean, great.

I can't wait. But Trump's probably like, look, every time I show up at one of these things, I get a five-point boost in the polls. So here I am again ranting about another judge yeah maybe he just assumes he's gonna lose he wants to shape public opinion and he also thinks he's going to appeal this and eventually uh hit some right-wing judge somewhere on the ladder he's already lost he has lost this is going to be about the number so this is just about a number and like what he owes there was a criminal trial last year where his cfo got sent to jail yeah this is like pretty well established fact pattern here yeah i don't think i don't think

he's gonna it's gonna be too successful which is also i mean perhaps the uh forgetting to ask for the jury was intentional because maybe trump just thought he'd have better luck telling everyone that it was a crooked judge than it was a crooked jury although i don't really think he'd care that much about the distinction at least with the jury you get like maybe one mega guy yeah right yeah like bernie carrick on there like oh sweet yeah that's true just like can we move this thing to staten island yeah right yeah exactly maybe just i just just want firefighters from staten island that's please please your honor So, do you guys know that Trump was right here in Anaheim, California over the weekend? What? Checking out Disney?

Yeah, he was checking out Disney. He was there at the California Republican Convention, and he laid out his larger vision for law and order in a second term during a rambling speech. Let's listen. I will direct a completely overhauled DOJ to investigate every radical DA and AG in America for their illegal, racist and reverse enforcement of the law. And you don't like somebody or if somebody's beating you by 10, 15 or 20 points like we're doing with Cro crooked Joe Biden. Let's indict the motherfucker. Let's say that.

And we'll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco. How's her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know? Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shot. I mean, so this is all being covered as background noise. Like, this did not, Trump calling for the execution of suspected shoplifters as they walk out the door of the store. That did not make a lot of headlines. The Atlantic's Brian Klass is calling this the banality the store. That does not make a lot of headlines. The Atlantic's Brian Klass is

calling this the banality of crazy, professor. He argues that the press needs to treat Trump's incitements and lawlessness as the story of the 2024 election. What do you guys think? It seems like that's, yeah, well, wouldn't that be nice, I guess. But like, that's what Biden's doing when he's trying to,'s trying to draw attention to this. That's what we're doing when we're talking about. I don't know how at this point he has inured us to this kind of stuff. He is doing this every day, threatened to execute Mark Milley last week. That was the fifth story.

Yeah. That finally bubbled up. It did bubble up. And also, you know, look, Markey got booked on uh 60 minutes and and made comments about this and i think is his uh final speech as chairman of the joint chiefs reference you know sort of like not kowtowing to dictators so i do think this stuff every time someone yells about something not getting covered it ends up getting covered i think this was probably just like a late night speech on what a saturday night friday night right in anaheim so you know not the it wasn't downtown new y York. But you're right that Biden is making political violence threats to the courts. That was a big part of the speech in the interview

that we're going to talk about in the next section that he did. So it is becoming part of the narrative in the campaign. But yeah, of course, it's crazy to shoot a shoplifter. It's an insane thing for a president to suggest. And, you know, you can't really say, oh, that's just Trump says these crazy things like he has put out a proposal, a campaign proposal, policy proposal that if he's president again, they will he will execute drug dealers. Right. So it's it's not that far from drug dealers to shoplifters. He's talked about, you know, sending federal troops into cities that have high crime rates using the Insurrection Act next time around, using also troops to start deporting immigrants. Right. Like he is he's starting to propose these things.

And of course, they want to clear out all the bureaucrats in the federal government so that they only have Trump loyalists who will carry out all these plans and not worry about adhering to the Constitution or the law. So it's something to something to actually be quite scared about. I think it's real. something to actually be quite scared about i think it's really yeah yes i i agree i just i also like you know we the insurrection pushed it out of the headlines but like you know clearing lafayette park one of the first uh uh one of the first one of the one of the early 2016 kerfuffles was like ah you got to knock the crap out of them like he's been talking about drug dealers being executed for a very long time. This is like, the reality is, yes, these are more extreme statements. They are also incremental to the crazy shit he's been saying for years. I think it's quickly worth pointing out that he's

not alone in making some of these comments. Ron DeSantis is talking about executing suspected drug dealers, trafficking drugs across the border. And when pressed on how you would figure out someone's a drug dealer versus, I don't know, a parent with a kid, he was like, wow, we figured it out in Iraq, so we'll figure it out here. We absolutely did not figure it out in Iraq. We had a horrific problem with killing civilians. So, you know, like this kind of bloodthirsty law and order rhetoric is gaining a lot of traction on the right. They're all chasing each other to a, you know, darker, darker place on this stuff. And what is chilling to me is obviously it is terrible that Donald Trump is saying these things,

but joking about how Nancy Pelosi's husband was beaten in the head with a hammer during a home invasion, getting laughs, the blood-curdling cheers from people about shooting shoplifters. The problem, right, is that over decades, the right wing media has like stirred these people up and gotten them to this point. Trump was the one who figured it out. But so have a lot of other people now, too. And look, I don't think that the media needs to cover this in a way where it's like, look how bad Trump is. Right. Again, it's not the media's job to win the election for Democrats. But if we think back to a lot of the complaints around the CNN town hall with Trump and Caitlin Collins, it was, why are we platforming Trump again, right?

Or we shouldn't, there's this whole movement, like we shouldn't amplify his message. The mistake in 2016 was platforming Trump and amplifying his message, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, the more Trump that people hear, the worse it is for him. Right. When does his approval ratings tank or go the lowest? Right. Trying to take health care away. Charlottesville, January 6th, the daily COVID press conferences.

The more people hear from Trump, the worse it is for him. Right. Like the person who is best at prosecuting the case against Trump is not a Democrat. It's not a Republican. It's not a Democrat. It's not a Republican. It's not a lawyer. It's not a judge. It's Donald Trump. Yeah, I agree.

And I just think that like the media sort of overcorrected from 2016 in ways in 2020 by thinking like, oh, we don't need to platform him all the time or have people listen to him. Like, I think people need to hear him all the time. Well, especially now when look, Ron DeSantis is super PAC today decided to release a bunch of polls that show him losing by between 28 and 31 in early primary States, uh, and head to head matchups. Donald Trump is getting over 50% in New Hampshire. So I think everyone's just got to wrap their heads around the fact that this is like a 90% chance. Trump is the Republican nominee, if not 95, a hundred percent. Uh, and he's going to have a 50-50 chance against Joe Biden. So yes, I do think the coverage of these kinds of comments and all the other things he's saying will pick up and increase. My concern is the overlap of where some of these

issues will be popular. I think the really hard line, bloodthirsty immigration rhetoric is more popular than people think. And it's really scary. Ron DeSantis is talking about deporting everyone who came into the country during the Biden administration. Yeah. Seven million, eight million people. Yeah. I mean, my my my question about all this is, yeah, like I agree, Trump is at his least popular when he's most in people's faces, but also memories are short. You know, Donald Trump was at his lowest ebb after Access Hollywood. And, you know, James Comey putting out a letter. Yes, that hurt Hillary Clinton. But one of the things it did is it kind of pushed Donald Trump's scandal aside just for a couple days, just for long enough for people to forget just enough that just enough people forgot how heinous he was. And like, sure, do I think covering this now is really important? Yeah, I think people should understand how much of a threat Donald Trump is, how extreme his rhetoric has gotten. But really, like if it's this is going to be something we're going to be dealing with for the next seven months. I realize that Access Hollywood seemed like least made me think that there is a difference

between Trump being caught saying things that are horribly offensive and Trump saying things that could end up affecting people's lives in a tangible way because it would result in policy from Donald Trump. So I do think that like, like January 6th, like these sort of these incitements to violence, to physical violence, to political violence. I think that lands with people and lands with voters in a different way than your typical Donald Trump said something crazy today or Donald Trump said something horribly offensive about this person or that person or that person. And I just think that we get it like the Biden folks. They totally understood this in the run up to the 2022 midterms and the January 6th committee understood it and Biden understood it. And I think like making sure that that message is out there and that people are understanding what could actually happen if Donald Trump wins is going to be the most important thing to do. It is. protections it's just it's a tough thing to explain yeah and i think and look at it it was in a it was an official speech then he's not in like campaign mode right but the easier way the more understandable way to say that is like yeah mike flynn in charge of the defense department and sydney powell is ag right like you just you got to make it easy for people understand them

like oh no he's going to get rid of a civil servant bureaucrat and replace them with a political appointee like that's that's not very it not going to move a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, you, you, you said it, but like one of Trump's lowest moments wasn't actually because of his rhetorical excesses or threats to violence. It was his position on healthcare, his extreme position on healthcare. I wouldn't say his position. I would say his attempt to take it away from people, which then is in the same category of like January 6th, people worried about political violence in their own community. You know what I'm saying? Like you've got to bring it home to people. And I do think that like losing your health care or worried about the country falling into like

chaos and violence is they both can affect you. Yeah. I mean, look, you can say that like people were worried about political violence in their in their communities. What they saw on their television was an attack on the nation's capital. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, so Biden gave that speech in Arizona. It was sort of little noticed. It was a great speech. Everyone should go check it out, but it didn't get a ton of coverage. He honored the late John McCain there, and he warned that today's Republican Party is being driven by an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of democracy. He then sat down for an interview with John Harwood for ProPublica, where he laid out the stakes for 2024. Somehow we've got to communicate to the American people, this is for real.

This is real. If they were to take over. If the former president were to become president again, the things he says he will do are a threat to American democracy. And by the way, it's not just here. As I travel the world, I have heads of state asking me, I mean, concerned of heads of state, look, what's going to happen? Does that mean?

Because democracy is in jeopardy in other parts of the world as well. I never thought I'd see a time when someone was worried about being on a jury because there may be physical violence against them if they voted the wrong way. What did you guys think of the interview? Right message for Biden in 2024? It was a good interview. I mean, I think the challenge is just getting enough people to see it. You know, I mean, they did it with ProPublica. ProPublica is a great organization. They've done amazing work digging into corruption at the Supreme Court, for example. But, you know, I checked the view

count on YouTube. It was like 115,000, right? So like got a lot of work to do to reach more people with this very important, urgent message. The speech is the other part of that. I saw the White House was deeply frustrated that Fox News took none of President Biden's speech in Arizona live, par for the course from them. But reaching people with this message is really tough. Shows you what a bubble Twitter is too, because I went on Twitter Sunday and all you could see is people talking about Harwood's interview. And it was a great interview and Biden did great and it was great questions. you could see is people talking about Harwood's interview and it was a great interview and Biden did great and it was great questions, but a hundred thousand views on YouTube, you're like, oh yeah, everyone was talking about it in a very small bubble. And it got picked up. It'll get

clipped and shared and picked up other places. For sure. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, here's, first of all, I think the speech was excellent. I, there, it is, you know, there's been a few different stories about how he's kind of like drawing on his like coterie of historians and this speech is definitely it is a there are lines that are clearly meant to evoke fdr speech at the 1936 democratic convention about rendezvous with destiny this talks about this generation's job he says you know in the rendezvous with destiny speech he says you know uh that other places they have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living in biden's speech he says uh people are giving away that's most precious to them because they feel frustrated he is trying to evoke

the seriousness of what the world faced with with the rise of fascism in this moment my and and what is also clear in the interview is how deep like deeply and personally biden takes this and how much he views it as like the central goal and mission of his presidency in his life is to be here to make the case for democracy and to make the case for not just like democracy as a form of government, but democracy as a practice of being respectful of, of treating the other side as opponents and not enemies, like how much he internalized that and how meaningful it was for him to speak about John McCain. But there was only there was one part of the speech he gave where he says,

for all its faults, American democracy remains the best path forward to prosperity, possibilities, progress, fair play, and equality. And what I found when I was listening to the interview, when I was watching the speech, you're right. It is like a big conversation about people that are hyper-engaged. They are worried about the threat to democracy. Biden is correctly worried about the threat to democracy. But there's another part of the case that I don't think comes through in the speech, which is a very grand story about the values of the democracy and why these threats are so dangerous, which is why is democracy the better way to organize ourselves? Why do you believe democracy can deliver? What are the ways in which you think democracy is going to be better for people in their day-to-day lives? How can it help them? How does it matter? How does it manifest?

Because there are portions of the speech, as Tommy points out, where he goes into great detail about Schedule F and the federal bureaucracy and all of these details. And there's other parts where that are very emotional and direct and not as sort of bureaucratic. But I do think that that's part of the story that I think a lot of people assume, which is democracy is just better and everybody gets that. But one of the issues we see in poll after poll is like, especially for young people, they don't understand why democracy is so good. They don't understand why democracy should deliver. And we need to be making that argument too. I'd say two things about that. One, the Biden administration and the Biden campaign would say

that the way that their economic agenda links to their democracy agenda is that Biden's whole goal since being president was to show that democracy can deliver. They keep saying that. And so that's all, you know, we did this bipartisan infrastructure bill. We passed the Inflation Reduction Act. We got all this done. And we are showing through our action, through the legislation that Biden's passing that democracy can deliver for people. Right. And they're hoping they connect the dots. It's still tricky, but they're they're trying to do it. Second, I think you're right that like there's a lot of rhetoric so far, both in the Harwood interview and in the very good Arizona speech, too. The next step is to be specific about what the Trump MAGA extreme agenda, anti-democratic agenda will actually mean for people. And that's going back to what I was saying where, you know, he wants to send troops into if you if you live in a blue city,

which is most cities and you and he decides you have high crime rates. He wants to use the Insurrection Act to send in federal troops to your city. Imagine that. Imagine if you're a business that doesn't seem sufficiently anti-woke. Maybe he'll have his new loyalist IRS director investigate your business. Maybe if you are a political opponent in some way, he's going to come after you with the DOJ because, you know, Rudy Giuliani will be attorney general. Like, I do think you've got to actually draw those connections. That's like the next step.

Well, I think it's also it's hard to sell that democracy is the best form of government and can deliver when all anyone ever hears is that Washington is a mess. And we're currently in the middle of a government shutdown. So I agree with you. But it's like it's a tough sell. I also think the speech, though, it wasn't just about democracy. There was also a big veterans thing keying off McCain because he brought back the Atlantic reporting that Trump called dead service members suckers and losers at a cemetery. He talked about Trump calling Mark Milley a traitor and floating death as punishment. There was a whole riff on the ideals that McCain stood

for that seemed designed to peel off the military vote. He went after Tommy Tuberville for his blockade on military promotions. They're just doing a lot of things in the speech. Yeah. But one more, just I think everything that you just said was right, but I think there's another piece of it. So you're talking about some of the kind of like the ways in which Trump's threats to political violence could be made to feel real for people. I think that's really important. But I do think one thing that and I do think they are doing this and just this was a speech that was broader about like kind of like big, big D democracy. But the threats to basic rights are also tied to the threat to democracy and referring to the basically, you know, he talks about the rule of law, but part of this is also

live and let live and people being free to live as they want and not coming for the books you want to read and not coming for your kids and abortion bans and abortion bans. And so I think like, it's not but but when Biden thinks about the threats to democracy, it's clear in the interview, like he is very much focused on, like, undermining the rule of law, undermining democratic institutions and the threats to political violence. But I think more of it, I think, I think it is very visceral for people, especially after the last year we've had that part of the attack on democracy is attack on, is an attack on basic rights. And like, I feel like that is just as important and real for people. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. I wasn't just talking about political violence. I'm saying like troops in your cities and like book bans and abortion bans and like all of the, you know, what you can't do is just talk about sort of gerrymandering and the filibuster and all this kind of stuff like that.

Because that all gets into process stuff, right? You're going to say like what the anti-democratic agenda actually means, how it would affect your life. And there's a whole range of ways that can affect your life. There's a whole lot of people who like anti-democratic agendas is the problem because it helps their outgroup stay in power. But anyway, did you guys catch there was a very funny moment in the speech where Biden was referencing the 1972 campaign

and he says to John Harwood, who's 66, you're not old enough to remember. I know, I know. What was interesting is that- Yeah, well, we had another strump i got strump thermos strom yeah to help uh reauthor finally reauthorize the voting rights act i think like a long time ago yeah at that moment he also he started he used a term that you don't even hear anymore which is limousine liberals yeah he started talking about limousine

liberals and i've never been a limousine liberal i will say though you watch that john harwood interview and there is the whole idea that biden is like senile and and losing a step he was sharp he's on it he has thought really deeply about these issues he was very good he was i i still does his like don't take our word for it he does it yeah he does his old timey references for sure because he's old but he doesn't seem like he lost a step at all. No, I agree. And actually, that was something I was feeling the same way. And the other thing that was interesting, too, about it is like when he talks about

the limousine liberal issue, he's actually getting at what we're talking about, which is we have to like, I've always understood that you need to talk about issues in a way that people can really understand. But the other thing he said that actually, that I haven't heard him maybe articulate exactly this way. He said that hate never goes away. It like hides under rocks until it's given optimum given oxygen yeah and it was a really kind of it was just interesting seeing him kind of by the time it was later in the interview and he he was that was in the strom thermon context yeah and he used to think it

would could be killed off but instead he's learned that no it just hides and waits to be resuscitated yeah and the thing that's interesting is he always comes back in that democracy speech. He ends by being like, I've never been more optimistic about America. I've never been more optimistic about America. And I'm glad he's saying that, but he's not. He's actually, he is very, very worried. He is very, very scared. And he is scared in part because he has this sort of practical understanding of like racism and bigotry clearly from his own experience and from being a very old man and it was interesting to see him kind of go there yeah that was really i think

what probably makes him optimistic is he believes that if enough people are made aware of this and are paying attention then we can overcome it and again like we have in the past but he's worried and he says but that's why he keeps saying in the interview it's real it's real it's real but he's worried. And he says, but that's why he keeps saying in the interview, it's real, it's real, it's real. And he's, and like, and I agree. And I, it is frustrating for all of us. But in that moment, when he's saying it's real, it's real, it's real. He sounds like every resistance liberal. That's like, why don't you people see this the way that I see this? And I think what is the parts that we're talking about are like, how do you make it real for people? And it has to get out of the historian mode. It just has to. Finally, we have a new senator here in California.

Governor Newsom has appointed Emily's List president LaFonza Butler to fill the seat of the late Dianne Feinstein, who passed away last week at the age of 90. Butler has quite a resume before leading the country's biggest organization to help elect pro-choice women. She led the Fight for 15 in California as the head of the Service Employees International Union. She's also been a senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris during Kamala Harris's campaign and will be the first black lesbian to serve in the United States Senate. What's still unknown is whether she'll serve as a temporary replacement or enter the crowded primary race to succeed Senator Feinstein. That includes representatives Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. What do you guys think of the pick and how Newsom handled it? I'll tell you what my honest reaction was, which is, oh, this doesn't seem like much of a caretaker.

I guess the next time Gavin Newsom goes to French Laundry, it'll be because one of the three people currently running will have rolled his head in there. I had a different reaction. Look, the Senate's full of like rich people and lawyers. And I know it's cool to have like a former SEIU local 2015 president, right? And an EMILY's List organizer and an activist. I thought she was sort of in the vein of other clearly interim picks who are basically former staffers. There was Mo Cowan in Massachusetts who took John Kerry's seat for a short period of time. There's Ted Kaufman in Delaware, who was Biden's longtime chief of staff. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she's going to decide to run.

If she does, she'll have a real head of steam. But it seems like it was well received. I do think Gavin probably regrets putting a bunch of conditions on who he would name in advance. That just always seems to create political problems. Like politicians, the one lesson you want is, right, give yourself as much space as possible because Barbara Lee's supporters tried to box him in and demand that she be the one selected to this interim post. But I don't know. It seems like people are happy with the pick. Yeah, just so people know how this all went down, people are happy with the pick. Yeah, just so people know how this all went down,

Newsom made a promise three years ago that he'd fill a hypothetical vacancy by Dianne Feinstein by appointing a black woman. This was after criticism that he didn't appoint a black woman to fill Kamala Harris's Senate seat, but appointed Alex Padilla, the current senator, the other senator from California, who has become california's first latino senator what he clearly didn't account for or wasn't thinking about at the time was that there would already be a competitive primary for the seat when feinstein retired or in this case died featuring a black woman barbara lee and then he said he wouldn't appoint anyone who's running in the primary because he didn't want to give that person an unfair advantage when voters were going to decide soon anyway then last week his office issued a clarification saying anyone who he appointed was free to also run in the primary which of course

was always the case because there is like there's no such thing there's no such thing as an interim replacement that has conditions where you can't run that's just let's just not a constitutional requirement and so but i do think to tommy's like LaFonza Butler, first of all, her resume is stellar. Very exciting that she's going to be California's newest senator. But because she is such a longtime Democratic Party activist and organizer, close with Vice President Harris, she almost served as Newsom's chief of staff. At one point, he tried to make her chief of staff. At one point, he tried to make her chief of staff. It does make me think that it's very possible she has already decided that she's not going to run and communicated that to Newsom. And he knew that when he picked her. Again, things change. She could decide, hell, I'm going to run

now. And if so, she would have five months to put together a campaign and raise a fuckload of money. Adam Schiff was out today reminding everyone that he has $32 million. I mean, the other thing about it is that lesbians famously can very quickly come to a decision of money uh adam schiff was out today reminding everyone that he has 32 million dollars i mean the other thing about it is that lesbians famously uh can very quickly come to a decision to pursue something long term and that's that's part of it as well i don't even barely get it barely get it yeah olivia's with me okay cool anyway there's now um there's now four elections for the scalper summaries because there is a special election to fill out the last weeks of Feinstein's term. Meaning that like once the election happens in November 2024, there will be between November and January when the new senator is sworn in.

There'd be like a slice of like about a month for someone to become senator. weren't in there'd be like a a slice of like about a month for someone to become senator but the the primary will for the special election will be held as the same day as the primary for the general election in march and then the two other elections the final the the general election for the special and the general election for the full six years will happen in november but so do all these candidates are just going to file for both and hoping everyone's voting for the same person twice i think they're all going to do what the other ones are going to do. Because you don't want to, like, if Schiff decides to go on the special, then Porter and Lee are, they're going to file on the special too. So I'm wondering if they'll have some kind of communication.

Like, are we all doing this? Are we not doing this? Like, what's happening? Maybe LaFonza Butler will file for the special, you know, and then she'll serve out the last month. And the other three will say, okay, we're going to back off. As part of a speech where she says, I have decided to file for this and I'm not going to pursue the election. Yeah, that would require, I think, a little bit more of a collegial California delegation

that doesn't always get along. I'm not sure that Katie Porter is going to do what Gavin Newsom's team wants her to do necessarily. Yeah, but like I said, I think they all probably, like LaFonza Butler, they probably all know LaFonza Butler. I'm sure she talked to all of them too, right? She's been part of California politics. And I do think it was a smart pick from Newsom because he was getting criticism from the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Barbara Lee supporters. And he selected someone who is not

going to get criticism from any of those people. And sure enough, the CBC applauded the choice of LaFonza Butler after criticizing him on the Barbara Lee thing. So I think he sort of headed off any criticism about the pick because it's hard to criticize him picking someone who is progressive and a labor leader and you know head of emily's list look this started because he didn't want to be criticized and now he's ending it by trying to not be criticized and i hope it all works out hey just based on this conversation are there things we could do instead of democracy are there alternatives i know this seems too complicated she seems really cool um i wonder she's young too she's like 44 45 yeah the only challenge is she

currently lives in maryland i saw i saw i saw daryl ice or something was like a question just you just have to register to vote in california before you're uh yeah that's all that's what the rules say well you gotta get an apartment or something yeah well she's been in california forever too so she's been like a fixture it's not like she's a a real carpetbagger here she's been she's been a fixture of cal politics for years and years and decades. Right, right. She just needs a mailing address. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two decades she was leader of SEIU California. All right. Before we go to break, two quick housekeeping notes. The Supreme Court is officially back in session. And

if you want to know what kind of bullshit they're up to this term, strict scrutiny is just the pod for you. Melissa Murray, Leah Littman, and Kate Shaw are brilliant, funny, and make the law accessible for dummies like us. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny each week wherever is just the pod for you. Melissa Murray, Leah Littman, and Kate Shaw are brilliant, funny, and make the law accessible for dummies like us. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny each week wherever you get your pods.

Also, this week is apparently banned book week. You know, I said last week was? I don't fucking know. You always call that too early. Yeah,

how do I miss that week? It's the most important week. Anyway, go to votesaveamerica.com, find all the ways to help fight book bans across the country. We also have some fun merch in the Crooked store.

There is Free the Books merch, Are You Afraid of the Books tees that are well-timed for Halloween, and kids' tees and onesies that say, Read me a banned book. Check it out at crooked.com. When we come back, Pramila Jayapal talks to Lovett about what role Democrats will play in the McCarthy-Gates drama.

The government didn't shut down, but the House is still a shitshow. After a last-minute passage of a bipartisan short-term funding mill that pushes the next funding deadline to November, Kevin McCarthy's allies are in a frenzy trying to save the Speaker's job as Matt Gaetz leads a right-wing rebellion to remove him, an effort that includes reaching out to Democrats to help him do it. Joining us to help us understand what is happening and why she didn't send Gaetz's call to voicemail, the chair of the Progressive Caucus, Representative Pramila Jayapal. Welcome back to the pod. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. So for weeks, we were hearing that McCarthy wouldn't work with Democrats to get a CR pass because he wouldn't risk the gavel, which is, of course, exactly what he ended up doing. What can you tell us about how this went down? There was a lot of conversation that McCarthy had to somehow prove a shutdown

had to happen to prevent a shutdown. What changed? What did you see? Well, I think that's exactly right. I mean, we had to get down to the end, which is terrible, terrible way to run government. But I think from his perspective, he just didn't have the votes. And he kept leaning more and more to the right to try to get the votes. But when it became clear that he still wasn't going to get the votes, despite cutting spending by 30% across the board, despite putting in all these terrible border provisions, he still wasn't going to have the votes. He realized that two things. One, he was going to need us. And two, that the Senate was going to jam him with Ukraine funding, which his people were not going to want if we didn't pass something

first. And I think both of those things led to him realizing that one way or another, he's going to have a motion to vacate. He should get this deal done and perhaps bring more people in through doing that. Yeah, President Biden, after the deal came through, said that he was hoping that this process would cause Kevin McCarthy to have some kind of a revelation. I don't know if you saw any light shining down on him or any kind of religious experience in his eyes. But is the fact that he thought no matter what he could do, that Gates and the far right of his caucus was going to try to remove him, is that in part why the government didn't shut down? Look, there was no halo suddenly shining above Kevin McCarthy's head. He didn't undergo some

kind of a big spiritual transition. I am not close enough, John, to him to look in his eyes and see anything that's changed in his soul. Kevin McCarthy exists every day to make sure that he can be speaker just two hours later, four hours later, six hours later. And I think the pressure from a lot of his Republicans and Biden districts was getting intense. They didn't want the government to shut down. The pressure from a lot of his Republicans in Biden districts was getting intense. They didn't want the government to shut down. The pressure from the Senate was getting intense because there was a Senate effort to push a bill over to us. And I think he realized that he was going to get a motion to vacate one way or another.

So might as well bite the bullet, get this done, hope that he could buy some goodwill. We could talk about whether or not he did, but hope that he could buy some goodwill. We could talk about whether or not he did, but hope that he could buy some goodwill and just move forward. And I think that's exactly what happened. So I think there's a place where the far right, and I think a lot of Democrats, I think virtually everyone agrees, something that is that Kevin McCarthy isn't a reliable negotiator. People just don't trust him. Matt Gaetz reached out to you to find out what Democrats might do in the event of this effort to, you know, a motion to vacate, which is an effort to remove the speaker. You kicked, you told him basically, we're not, I'm not dealing with this today. Let's keep the government open. But but what is your what is your take on what Democrats should be doing in response to this effort to remove McCarthy?

we had a CR, a continuing resolution to fund the government. And so I think he gets, and I think that helped in making sure he didn't push a motion to vacate soon. We have had these conversations and really thought through all the scenarios with the Progressive Caucus. And our aim is to put as much power in the hands of Hakeem Jeffries, our leader, as possible. And so the way to do that, because Kevin McCarthy is completely unreliable, I mean, let's look at the fact that the guy made a deal with the president, signed a bill into law around funding levels, and then immediately flipped on it. Let's look at the fact that he apparently told the president that he wanted to do Ukraine funding, according to the president. But when the president said that, he immediately flipped and said, not unless we do border stuff first. So the guy is completely unreliable. And that is one thing that both Democrats and Republicans agree on. He's a

liar. And so if we are going to think about anything, and this is really going to be a call for our leadership, but also ultimately for all of us, we just need to make sure that it is baked into the rules of the house. That it isn't just relying on Kevin McCarthy's goodwill or that halo to suddenly come shining down or anything like that, but it's actually baked into the rules of the house. That's I think what we're hoping will happen. So I'm trying to understand, that is similar to what you said earlier last week, that basically we can't trust Kevin McCarthy. If we're going to do something that involves concessions, it's got to be written down, not one of these side agreements that Kevin McCarthy seems to make where he promises people

things and they say that he's going back on his word. But then you were also asked if you would do anything to help Kevin McCarthy secure the gavel. And you said, no. Are those two things in conflict? Am I missing a nuance? Yes. I mean, what I said is don't look to us to save Kevin McCarthy unless we have some sort of power sharing agreement that's codified in the rules because I don't trust them. And you know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Or if you're George Bush, shame on you again or whatever.

We'll get fooled again. Yeah. But I think we have to make sure that we're not just falling for this, oh, Kevin McCarthy has suddenly changed. The same dynamics that kevin mccarthy has been dealing with this whole time are still going to be there and if we have you know there are lots of examples of how you can give power to the democratic side or to the other side so that it's a it's a shared governance let's think about what pieces of legislation we want to bring up

control of the committees those kinds of things that. That, I think, is important to do. Is that basically saying that if there is this motion to vacate, are we in a world where Democrats are talking about voting for Kevin McCarthy, or is it a situation where Democrats are just voting present so that they don't need as many votes to keep him? I'm trying to understand what this actually looks like. Well, I think if there was some serious, you know, agreement for power sharing, and I think it would be very difficult to convince our members on anything other than something that's codified into the rules. So I just want to be clear about that. But, and I also think, by the way, that there should be, there will need to be probably more chaos with the Civil War on their side before their members get to a place where they might want to do that. But remember that a present

vote is essentially taking our vote. It's essentially saving McCarthy. And that's a very serious thing. I mean, for our members, saving McCarthy means we're signing on to the rest of his agenda forever and ever, as long as he's Speaker. And I think that is a very dangerous proposition for Democrats, both now and going into 2024. It's a position I think you must be surprised to find yourself even contemplating. Like on the one hand, no, of course not. This is a person you moments ago referred to as a liar, someone who has pushed some of the most extreme legislation that we've seen in Congress in years, except at the same time, we don't have a majority.

If there is going to be a speaker, we're not choosing between Kevin McCarthy and Hakeem Jeffries. Well, it depends. I mean, I think that it depends. You know, if things get bad enough, I've had Republicans say to me, we just want somebody who doesn't lie. And, you know, that could be a Democrat. Now, when I say, well, we've got our speaker, it's Hakeem Jeffries, people are like, oh, you know, well, I don't know if I could go that far to vote for a Democrat. So I'm not saying there's consistency here. But what I am saying is

the hope of getting anything that gives Democrats real power is going to be difficult, and it needs to be codified. That's my belief. Otherwise, I don't think we should save Kevin McCarthy, because how can you get worse than Kevin McCarthy? It's not like Kevin McCarthy has bent at every stage to his far right people. The makeup of their body is such that their caucus, that whoever is speaker is going to deal with these same dynamics. And one thing I do think Matt Gates understands is the speaker is never going to be Matt Gates or Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's got to be somebody who can be accepted and get the majority of votes in their caucus. And so that's why I told him that one of the things that I have

learned in my seven years here is that you can't run nobody against somebody, right? And the somebody has to be, that you run, has to be somebody that's going to be acceptable on your side because why would we want somebody that's worse than Kevin McCarthy? Hard for me to imagine, but let's say it's Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. And so you notice that the names they're coming up with are quite more moderate people like Tom Emmer and Tom Cole. But still, whoever it is, if we don't have it codified into the rules of the House, they will bend to the right of their party, just like Kevin McCarthy did. So we're in this period where we have, what, 45 days

until the next potential shutdown. This stopgap kicked a lot of the contentious issues down the road. They include funding for Ukraine, this debate about border security. What happens next? It seems that there was some kind of promise around Ukraine funding to go to this stopgap that didn't include it. What's going to happen in the next six weeks? Well, we have six weeks, and that means we have to get the ultimate government funding bills done. And the bills that the Republicans are putting forward right now are total non-starters in the Senate. I mean, things like a 70% cut in the LIHEAP program, which is heating for, you know, for needy residents across the country. Winter is coming. People need that heating. Things like kicking out, you know, tens of thousands of teachers out of out of work, just complete non-starters. And so what we need to do is essentially get to a place where the Senate bipartisan funding appropriations bills all came out of committee unanimously, all 12 bills

are the bills that we move forward. And those bills do have funding for Ukraine. We have plenty of votes for Ukraine funding from all Democrats plus, you know, a good number of Republicans, I think half of their caucus. But the problem is that it has to get put up. And I think the best way to do that is to put it within the context of the government funding bills, because somebody is going to have to explain if they vote against those why they voted against keeping the government open or funding the military just because they didn't like funding for Ukraine. So to me, that's the best way to do it. And frankly, it's the best thing for our constituents as well, because we won't have people saying, well, you funded

Ukraine, but you haven't funded the government for us yet. You haven't funded SNAP. You haven't funded WIC. You haven't funded all the things that are part of keeping Americans healthy and safe. And so I think they need to be combined. And in an ideal world, the Senate would do this very quickly and get it to us before we get to the next deadline of the shutdown. So that once again, we can be clear that there is a bipartisan solution that's passed the Senate. And all we have to do is put it on the floor and it would get enough votes. One more question on this. As this is all unfolding, this is going to be in the context of this fight over the speakership. When the far right is reaching out to Democrats, is it because they want to know whether or not Democrats are going to in

some way help McCarthy keep the gavel? Or is it because the far right wants Democrats to step aside so that McCarthy loses the gavel? I don't know that there's too much of a difference in that at the end of the day, because they literally, you know, some of them have obviously it's been written about some personal objections to McCarthy. But I do think that one thing that McCarthy did that has really hurt him is he's lied to everybody. I mean, he's lied to the president. He's lied to the far right. He's lied to the moderates. He's lied to everybody. And so that means that he doesn't have the kind of trust he needs for anything he says. And that's why they keep holding things up, because they feel like certain commitments were made. And I'm not weighing in on whether that's true or not true. But I've seen it

from our side, what he did to Biden, what he's done around Ukraine aid. Consistently, he has lied. And so I don't know that it matters. From our perspective, I think what matters is, number one, we do not support a speaker who has a right-wing agenda. Number two, we do not, I mean, we have our own candidate, that's Hakeem Jeffries. We took 15 rounds of votes on him. We can take a 16th, a 17th, 18th, 19th if we need to, but we've got our speaker. What we need is for them to recognize that and to create enough instability or, you know, we're not creating it, they're creating it, but to not feel like we have to step in to save them from their chaos. Because at the end of the day, we need to get power for Hakeem Jeffries to be able to have some control over the legislative

agenda, over the proceedings of the House. Or, you know, as long as we continue to keep the government funded, if they're unable to move any of their legislation, that's okay with us. All of it's bad. So, you know, I don't think we need to, we need to get into why they, I have no idea why they, I don't, I'm not interested enough to be close enough to like, figure out what their, what their rationale is. Is there any part of you late at night that thinks, well, look, McCarthy has, doesn't act on principle, something everybody agrees, but here we are, the government's open. We came within an inch of default, but we didn't default. And that there's a world in which

anyone that replaced McCarthy who would be worse might be in a position even worse than McCarthy was, unable to do what is necessary to prevent us from really crossing the line, from going into more shutdowns, from the risk of default? I mean, I have, you know, thought about that over and over again, and we've actually gamed out the scenarios all the way to the end, like multiple scenarios of what could happen. And I feel very confident in saying that the extreme mega right of the Republican Party is governing right now. whether it's on these extreme cuts that are so cruel that you can't even pass a Department of Defense bill, which is normally bipartisan, even if progressives don't always support it. There's usually enough in the middle to support DOD appropriations. That couldn't even happen this time because they put in a nationwide abortion ban, because they put in a ban on trans kids because, you know, our transgender affirming care, or they put in, you know, they took out all the, quote, DEI woke policies, which are really

just about teaching about slavery in schools. I mean, it is so extreme that I don't think we can fool ourselves into thinking that somehow McCarthy is this person and there could be somebody worse. So no, I don't really think that. And I think the only reason, I just want to be clear about this, this keeping the government open was an enormous victory for Democrats because we continue to hold the line. And, you know, last week when we heard about these border provisions that both the Senate and the House, including some, quote, these border provisions that both the Senate and the House, including some, quote, Democrats or independents in the Senate, were trying to put in, the Progressive Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the Black

Caucus all came out and said, we are not voting for something that has bad immigration, bad border policy. And so once we made that really clear, then it had to get stripped out. We said, we are not voting for things that are not the fiscal 23 cuts. And this is the whole Democratic caucus. And once that came out, the cuts had to get stripped.

And so I think we, and we all said we want disaster aid. And we on the Democratic side said we wanted Ukraine aid. Ukraine was the toughest, obviously, but we got what we wanted with that one exception of Ukraine, which by the way, Rand Paul was holding up in the Senate as well. So, you know, I think we have held the line consistently, and I think we're going to have to continue to do that no matter who the speaker is. consistently. And I think we're going to have to continue to do that no matter who the speaker is. And at the end of the day, again, unless we've got some real power sharing and control over the House with Republicans, which is not unheard of, this is not a crazy idea. I mean, the Senate had it last year when they were 50-50. Yes, the Republicans have the majority,

but they don't have a governing majority. They can't govern. They're unable to govern. So I think you have to look then at the same thing that kind of happens with the coalition government, right? When you have coalition governments in Europe or elsewhere in the world, they have to put together a coalition. And in order to put that together, they have to give something of great significance. And it's usually done through actual rules, not like a, hey, let's, you know, give a pinky swear. And, and, and, you know, prick our fingers for a little bit of blood. I mean, that's, it's just, we don't trust Kevin McCarthy, we shouldn't. Well, you know what? As true today as it has been

for the entirety of his speakership, Congresswoman Jayapal, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, John. Thanks for having me on. Thanks to Congresswoman Jayapal for joining us today. And we'll talk to you later this week. I was trying to ask a question for you too. too sure do you think it's weird that we still refer to the haster rule knowing all the rules and laws that he broke in uh other parts of his life maybe we just get a new term for that yeah the pedophile guy it's kind of at the bottom of my list of things that annoy me but it's a weird one it's well it's an outline you know and i agree i didn't say let's make it's not an a block question we should pitch that we should pitch on it an outro question. We should pitch on it.

For God's sake, we should pitch on it. How about we pitch on it? Okay. I'm willing. Well, the only reason I would say let's keep it is because it should remind people that their caucus is fucked in the head. Yeah, no, that's true.

That's true. But then when we're in charge, we try to use it. We're like, ooh. Yeah, well, we shouldn't use it. Anyway, thanks for bringing that up, Tommy. You're welcome. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

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