The Bulwark Podcast - Manu Raju: The Hostage Crisis on Capitol Hill

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

House Republicans are bickering and calling each other names, while the Matt Gaetz caucus threatens to hold the country hostage with a government shutdown. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans think the dress code change is the most important story of the week. Manu Raju joins Charlie Sykes.

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This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? At work, in social settings, around your family? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self, so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is a busy day, a shambolic day on Capitol Hill, which means it's another day that ends with Y. Is that right? So to sort all this out for us, we are joined by Manu Raju, Chief Congressional Correspond correspondent for CNN. And hey, congratulations, because this Sunday, you debut as the new anchor of Inside Politics,

11 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday. So congratulations, Manu. Thank you. I'm very, very excited. It's going to be a great show. I hope everyone will watch. I'll be able to use all my reporting from the Hill and roll it out on Sunday and provide viewers about what's going on behind the scenes. So I hope you can tune in.

Okay, so I'm going to ask you some tough questions about the media in the age of Trump a little bit later. But can we just sort out what happened yesterday? What is going on? Kevin McCarthy goes to the floor, basically dares the right wing, vote against this defense bill, at least the rule in the defense bill, and it goes down. So just give me a sense of how deeply in disarray, it sounds like we're in some sort of Groundhog Day, but how deep is the disarray of Kevin McCarthy's house this morning? It's really, really chaotic at the moment. I mean, there is, you know, typically, in order to pass any

legislation in the House, they first have to adopt the rule before they move on to legislation. What usually happens has been customary in every Congress for decades is that the majority party votes for the rule, the minority party votes against the rule. Right. Happens on almost every single piece of legislation. What's been different this Congress is the handful of members on his right flank simply are not going to listen to Kevin McCarthy and will vote against the rule. So what we saw yesterday with this defense spending bill, typically a bill that has wide support among Republicans

and significant support among Democrats, went down because five Republicans voted against the rule and McCarthy can only afford to lose four. That was enough to stall the bill in its entirety. And that is the year-long Pentagon spending bill. And I can tell you, Charlie, talking to the members afterwards, they were just furious. The Republicans at these members who voted against it, the five members who voted against it.

Some question McCarthy's strategic thinking here about actually putting this up for a vote, knowing that this would go down. And we're not even talking about the looming shutdown that has to be done by the end of the month, a short term spending goal just to keep the government open for a month. So Kevin McCarthy is in a total jam right now. And it's just unclear how he's going to try to get out of it. So there were actually two major setbacks yesterday, you know, as you mentioned, this government shutdown is looming. I mean, so he's also pulled the procedural vote on the stopgap spending bill that would keep the government funded through October 31st. So what is the endgame of the Matt Gaetz caucus? What do they hope to accomplish?

Is this all aimed at ousting Kevin McCarthy? Do they have a scenario in which they win and they get what they want? Because I'm not sure how that plays out. Yeah, that's the real question here. They probably have the votes to kick him out of the speakership. What they don't have the votes is to elect a new speaker or achieve their policy objectives. So the end game is a challenge. And really, that's always been the criticism of some of those members on the far right who tried to use Zeta Leverage. It's about the debt limit. It's about spending legislation in this sense, pushing on Kevin McCarthy to achieve their objectives. And there is not a real clear end game. So look what happened in the speaker race back in January. Ultimately, they conceded the far right and gave McCarthy the speakership.

Now, McCarthy's challenge is this, it's twofold. One, if he puts a CR on the floor, a continuing resolution on the floor to keep the government open and relies on democratic votes, which is going to be necessary here in this divided government, that's going to be enough to push for his ouster. If he doesn't do that, he's not going to get the votes to get this out of the House and the Senate and the government will shut down. So he is in a real pickle. And what Gates has said, even if there is a stopgap resolution and I get everything I want in there, just having that stopgap measure is enough for him to call for McCarthy's ouster because he wants him to move on each individual year long funding bill, not a short term spending bill.

So McCarthy is going to face this fight sooner or later on the floor. The question is, will they have the votes to knock him out? It seems like they probably could. But then what's next? And just no one knows the answer to that. The other question is, will the Democrats bail him out? I mean, at some point, Kevin McCarthy has to call up the White House or has to call up, you know, the, you know, Hakeem Jeffries and say, hey, I'm stuck here. I'm going to need Democratic votes to get this defense bill through and to get

the CR through. First of all, I mean, is he going to do that? And number two, are the Democrats in a mood to bail him out right now? Those are such key questions. And they are being very cautious, the Democrats are, about what they're going to do here. Kakeem Jeffries has been asked this. I've asked him this. He's basically said, it's a hypothetical scenario.

We're not even thinking about it, which they're thinking about it, but they don't really just don't know what to do because they could bail him out, but it's going to come at a price. And what is that price? There's things they can do. They can vote present. If they vote present, that lowers the voting threshold and to get a

majority, it can help Kevin McCarthy out. So there are things they can do to wheel and deal to help him here. But a lot of them, some of them who were open to it before aren't anymore because of McCarthy's decision to move forward with an impeachment inquiry for Joe Biden. Okay. So that's poisoned everything. Totally. And I talked to Dean Phillips, who's a Minnesota Democrat, someone who had been open to helping out McCarthy if he were pushed out. He told me that he would absolutely not help him out right now because of the impeachment inquiry. So that is the real challenge for McCarthy going forward. He's still pleased to write, but then if he works with Democrats, that's going to anger

the right. So it's going to maybe cause him to rethink his speakership in some way, but we'll see how he deals with it. Okay, so this is also exposing all kinds of divisions in the Republican ranks, right? I mean, it's not just the five bomb throwers. There are moderates, people from swing districts who are concerned about this. You had an interesting conversation with a New York Republican, Mike Lawler, who said, well, let's just play what Mike Lawler said. This is a conservative Republican, kind of MAGA friendly or MAGA adjacent congressman from New York who, you know, you asked about, so what do you think about the Republican strategy leading to a shutdown? This is what Mike Lawler had to say. This is not conservative republicanism. This is stupidity. The idea that we're going to shut the government down when we don't control the Senate, we don't control the White House.

These people can't define a win. They don't know how to take yes for an answer. It's a clown show. You keep running lunatics, you're going to be in this position. Whoa, you keep running lunatics. Well, this is like, how long has this been going on? He's shocked, shocked to look around and say, look, these are my colleagues, my own party. Look, you know, he and 17 fellow Republicans, 18 total, are in the pickle. They are from Biden districts. Biden won Mike Walters' district by 10 points back in 2020. He's going to have to run ahead against probably Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in a substantial way. And these members simply are not helping him. McCarthy has had to cater to this far right flank all Congress long and continue to put these members in a difficult spot. But McCarthy knows

this. That is the reason why the speaker did not have a vote to open up the impeachment inquiry, despite promising days prior that he would, because people like Mike Lawler were going to vote against it, and he wouldn't have had the votes to open up an impeachment inquiry. But in this situation, these members have not been through, like Mike Lawler, have not been through a government shutdown before. The political backlash could be severe. He knows it will look terrible on, it could look terrible on Republicans and pass his prologue here. And that is something that he is trying to get ahead of and say that it's not my fault. It's these guys' fault on the far right. And they're the ones who are holding up all

progress. But this is the thing, that pressure campaign has not worked among that far right flank. I played that same sound to Ralph Norman of South Carolina yesterday. He said, I disagree. And if the government, the government's going to shut down, he said, I believe it will. And they don't care about all of that. So just going back over McCarthy's strategy, McCarthy's strategy was complete appeasement, give them everything they want, you know, keep feeding the alligator, just assume that the lepers eating people's faces party would never actually eat his face. He seemed to switch the strategy when he realized that every concession was just emboldening them. And there were all these headlines about how, well, now he's getting tough. Now he's getting

mean. And, you know, he drops the F-bomb at the conference meeting last week, you know, bring the F in motion. So the appeasement hasn't worked. The new tough, mean, you know, F-U strategy is not working. What's McCarthy 3.0? What is his majority now? Is it three or is it four? Well, he just lost Chris Stewart. So he can only lose four votes at any time.

Four. I mean, it is is just that's a great question because for you know i talked to mccarthy's people about this a lot it is a day-by-day strategy with them they are just trying to get through the day figuring it out survive to the next day survive to the next day and just get through it so and that that was the same thing with the debt limit just get through the debt limit get it done and battle out the next battle the next battle which he did but now he's facing the backlash because of that those members are still angry about the deal he cut he backed away from that deal he cut about spending levels with the white house now they're in the predicament now because mccarthy backed away with it from the hostage from the essentially those members held the house hostage for a week they held the house hostage for a week and it

forced mccarthy to cater to them i mean now they're going to hold the entire country hostage with the shutdown they certainly can if mccarthy does not change his tactics here so at this exact moment the idea is just to try to get this stopgap bill out of the House with all Republicans, give the far right everything they want, essentially, hope the moderates don't rebel, get it out of the House, and then worry about the next day. Okay, then what happens when the Senate changes it and sends it back to them, and then they'll have to make a decision about whether to approve the Senate bill that will be much different than what the conservatives want. Well, we had to talk a little bit about the substance. So what is it that they

want? What is it that Matt Gaetz wants? I mean, I saw one statement where he's saying, I'm not going to vote in favor of this because this, you know, continues to fund the special prosecutor. It continues to fund Ukraine. I mean, what is the bill that they will vote for? We can get to the next step, which is that there's no chance that any of that gets through the Senate. There's no chance any of that becomes law. So we'll talk about the end game again in a moment. But what do they actually want? I mean, you have people like Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Ken Buck, Ralph Norman, Matt Rosendale. What is it that they're holding out for? What is it they're willing to shut the government down for? The challenge with that,

Charlie, is that they're all kind of different places on this. I mean, some of them want a specific agreement on a top line funding level for the entire federal government, much lower than even the previous bipartisan deals, something that would never pass in a Senate or a good sign into law. Some of them want specific policy objectives, like you mentioned, including provisions to defund the special counsel to go after the Justice Department in a more aggressive way. Even though this bill, this short-term bill that McCarthy is trying to get through does not have the additional aid to Ukraine. There are some conservatives who believe that it would still provide money to the Defense Department so that it could help them provide money to Ukraine.

And they want to pull back from money that can help them provide money to ukraine and they want to pull back from money that could potentially go to ukraine here so there is a disagreement about that from some of the members so they are kind of all over the place gates has a whole lot of different issues because he says mccarthy has not agreed to this condition this condition that condition and this condition is part of his initial deal to become Speaker. And he says that McCarthy needs to go back to that initial deal. So Gates is in a little bit of a different place on that. And there's no sign that McCarthy's going to go back to the initial deal. And by the way, Charlie, that initial deal was never released to the public. So we have actually no idea what exactly they agreed to for McCarthy to become Speaker here. So they're

in a bit of a different spot, which explains the real challenge for McCarthy, because if he gets a couple of these folks on board, a couple of them, other than could say no way, and some of them simply will never vote for a continuing resolution, no matter what. So however, no matter what's in there. So all of that is just adds to his dilemma. Okay, so just give me the vibe sense there. Because you're looking at this from the outside, it sounds like people are, you know, their nerves are getting strained. McCarthy certainly looked a little rattled yesterday after losing that vote. You see members of the Republican caucus ripping one another in press conferences. So what is the mood? It was stressed earlier this year, so that's not necessarily a news story, but give me your sense of where we're at right now. What does it feel like? I have not seen this level of tension really since the Speaker's race. I mean, during the Speaker's race, it was at its apex. They were going after each other, really insulting me. And then eventually they got there. McCarthy enjoyed a bit of a honeymoon period. They were able to pass some bills along party lines that got his

conference in line, whether it's about immigration and border security and parental bill of rights, energy issues, things that have no chance in the Senate, but at least got his conference in line. They felt good about it. The debt ceiling then passed. That changed things a lot because those members on the right were not happy with that debt ceiling deal. And as a result, he's had to deal with all of these people who have been saying, we're going to fight the battle and the funding battle when it comes time. And that's why he's in this position, all really because of the deal that he cut there. But public name calling is something else. Not just Mike Lowe calling them lunatics, but yesterday, Mike Garcia, who's from California and other difficult seat for Republicans, came out and accused those five

who scuttled the defense bill of being Chinese Communist Party sympathizers. He was saying that about fellow Republicans. And then you have others saying that they were catering to their political agenda. They didn't care about the country. You have Victoria Sparks of Indiana calling McCarthy a weak speaker. Then you have McCarthy dismissing her saying she's just quitting Congress because she's resigning and doesn't want to stay in the fight. He's coming back and attacking him publicly. So typically, you don't see this. You don't see this within an old party like this. Democrats, you know, even when the left was battling with the moderates in the first two years of Biden, it wasn't this level of personal name calling and bickering. So that adds to the real, real challenge here of actually

getting on the same page on the policy. Yeah. So when Marjorie Taylor Greene was calling Lauren Boebert a little bitch, that was just kind of like an hors d'oeuvre from what we could expect, a little bit of a prologue. It's like, okay, if you like this, you're going to love the main feature, which is coming in September. So what role does Donald Trump play in all of this? He's obviously sitting out there, Kevin McCarthy constantly looking over his shoulder. He doesn't want a social media bleep saying that he's sold out. Who is he citing? Is he giving Aiden comfort to the five holdouts? Where does he come down? That's a good question. I mean, he's kind of weighed in here and there, but he has not put his thumb on the scale in a substantial way. That is always a concern, especially if it comes time to push McCarthy out of speaker. And Trump comes out and says, it's time for someone new.

But McCarthy knows that. And that's why he calls Trump all the time. They talk a lot. And a lot of people suspect the reason why he pushed that Biden impeachment inquiry is because Trump and allies of Trump were the ones who were pushing this very hard. They already want to satisfy Trump, knowing he's going to get into a difficult spot with the shutdown and the likelihood of a vote to push him out of the speakership later in the month. So Trump is always looming over the House Republican Conference. And Trump knows he has that level of power. But at the moment, he has not abandoned McCarthy. But I mean, as we know, Charlie, I mean, loyalty is a one way street with Trump and anything can change at any moment. So in McCarthy, of course, Kevin knows that. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast.

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slash RentSafeTO. I usually don't get into the weeds on these things because to me, a lot of these, and you've covered them over the years, they feel like they're elaborate kabuki dances. You know, there's lots of hair on fire. And then at the last minute, you know, wiser heads prevail and you cobble together some sort of a shit sandwich of an omnibus or a cromnibus bill or anything. Is there any reason to think this time is different, that they're not going to get this thing done? Or is this going to be one where we spend a lot of time, a lot of oxygen, we shut down the government for a few days, and then the deal that everybody expects will happen? This feels a little different. It feels like a shutdown. I mean, I've been through several shutdowns under Trump and under Obama. And when they're in a spot where the two sides are just nowhere near each other, and there's so little time to get it done, that it feels like we are barreling into one.

Remember, we're talking about just the House trying to pass something on its own, not the House and Senate and the White House coming to a deal. You know, so like, and that's going to take some time to hash out. And look, Charlie, maybe they get through a short-term spending bill, but there's going to be another huge fight in a month. Nothing's going to change in a month to keep the government open until the next year. And they're beginning the impeachment inquiry. So this is the other overlay over this, is that they're going to hold their first hearing on the impeachment inquiry on September 28th, two days before the government could shut down.

They're going to go ahead with that. And as you point out, I think this is a really important point. This obviously affects the willingness and the enthusiasm of Democrats to bail out Kevin McCarthy or the Republicans. You know, when your enemy is in the process of digging a hole or shooting himself in the head or whatever, you don't interrupt him particularly. So there are moderates who are talking about kind of a plan B, you know, emergency plans to keep the government open. And this is what you've reported on it, but this is what the Washington Post reported. Some Republicans are seriously considering getting behind a bill that could, as soon as next week, serve as the vehicle that allows moderates to supersede

McCarthy's control of the House floor and force a vote to keep the government open. What exactly gets included in such a discharge petition, those are fighting words, remain unknown, but those familiar with the planning said it would include a short-term funding plan to avert a shutdown that could garner enough support from the House Democrats and the Senate. Is that possible? Wishful thinking? What do you think? I think it's both possible and wishful thinking. I think it's really unclear because in order to get, this very rarely succeeds, to go around the speaker and for rank and file members to essentially force their will on the speaker. To do that, you need 218 signatures to force a vote. There are 200, there would be five, essentially five Republicans to sign out with all Democrats.

So there's two challenges. There are, Mike Lawler is what we just spoke about. He's one of them. He said he's open to signing a so-called discharge petition, as are some of those others in swing districts. So I think that that is possible, but they do have to agree on the policy. And that is going to be the challenge here. But what exactly is in that bill and how they keep the government open, what conditions ride along with this effort. So it is uncertain. I know there are lots of discussions that are happening right now about doing that. But typically when I hear someone doing a discharge petition, I immediately rule it out.

I would not rule it out in this situation given how many scenarios, the stakes at play, all that. So I think it's something we need to watch very closely. And of course, you just put your finger on the irony here is that this discharge petition would require Democratic support, and they would have to have Democrats buy into the policy. So in other words, the result of the hardcore right holding out and torpedoing McCarthy would, in that scenario, mean legislation that would be much further to the left, much more Democrat friendly. Because if the Republicans can't negotiate among themselves, then they basically have to negotiate with the Democrats and you come up with a completely different piece of legislation. Yeah, and that's exactly the criticism that a lot of Republicans level against the far right. They said, look, you guys are going to end up with a more liberal outcome. You don't realize that. So let's agree on what we can agree on among Republicans, trying to get that into the bill

that we negotiated with the Democrats. And then we'll be happy. We'll fight it out later on the other stuff that we didn't get in there. But that they just don't see it that way. They see it as caving in to the left by doing that. Well, I mean, is there also just the gap between the governing party and the performative party here? Because, you know, when we're talking about what is the end game, do they actually think this messaging bill is going to go anywhere? Matt Gaetz obviously knows it's not going to be passed, but he also knows that it raises his profile, right? He gets more clicks, he gets more money. I mean, is there a group in this Congress that frankly doesn't give a shit

about what the actual legislation is, that they're playing a different game? We have one group that's saying, okay, we're actually trying to pass legislation. We're appropriating money. We want to keep the government open. And then you have the other folks going, I don't care about that. This is my show. This has been the dilemma within the GOP really since the Tea Party era. I mean, I know you love this. Well, Charlie, I mean, after the 2020 elections, it ushered in a whole new crop of members who, for lack of a better word, wanted to actually burn it all down. So they were ready to battle.

They wanted to battle their own party. They didn't care about the leadership and they were ready to fight. And that was John Boehner dilemma when he was Speaker of the House. He had a very hard time controlling them, the threat to actually use a motion to push them out of the speakership,

cause them to resign from the speakership. And there's that flank of the party is emboldened. They simply do not believe that their leadership is pushing hard enough to fulfill conservative ideas. Now, what that actually means in terms of policy, that's a whole different question, but they simply don't believe they're fighting hard enough. So that is the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. Democrats, for the most part, will fall in line behind their leadership and eventually cave if they are trying to hold out for their best approach. That members, they don't care. They were holding out because the

backlash they get, they're fine with the backlash. They feel it actually emboldens them. Okay. So that raises a really interesting question because, you know, Kevin McCarthy is out saying, hey, it's really hard to get stuff done when you have a small majority and everything, which is obviously objectively true. But as people have been pointing out, Nancy Pelosi had pretty much the same narrow majority. What was Nancy Pelosi's secret sauce in holding that caucus together? What did she have in terms of her approach that Kevin McCarthy does not have? Is it all about just

the nature of their caucuses? Or is there something about the nature of the leadership, Pelosi versus McCarthy? Where do you come down on that? I would just say fear. I think members feared Nancy Pelosi down the line. They did not want to get on the wrong side of her because she would make it painful to be on the opposite side of her. Suddenly, maybe you wouldn't get that special committee assignment that you had hoped for, or maybe things wouldn't be as beneficial for you in your re-election bid in different ways. Her art of persuasion was instilling some fear within her caucus. She also made sure that there was never going to be a situation like McCarthy is facing.

She raised the threshold for pushing someone out of the speakership when she became the speaker the second time around, making it much harder for, you know, it needed to have a lot more support to force a vote to oust a sitting speaker. McCarthy has his deal to cut the, to win the speakership, allowed just one member to call for that vote to push him out. He had to do that. And as a result, that threat to push him out is always over the overhanging over him. And members simply are just not as concerned about McCarthy. They believe that they can win

primaries without him. They believe that their power in social media and other ways, they'll be fine. They know that he's not going to kick them out of their committee assignments because they can vote to push him out of the speakership. So they believe there's really not a whole lot he can do. As a result, how do you enforce discipline on the Republican side of the aisle? It's just a much more complicated scenario here. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't, and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests,

RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Okay, so let's talk about the Senate. Let's talk about, obviously, the most important political story in Washington today, which is the controversy over the Senate dress code. This seems to be a big deal, right? And you see, this has become the new talking point. Even Rhonda Sanders had to have a press conference today. We talked about John Fetterman's and the dress code. So, I mean, that's it. I mean, we know what to go back to his normal attire, which has been a hoodie and shorts. And after the news broke about Schumer not enforcing the dress code, you saw, of course, this backlash from the right, as you're mentioning here. I should note, though, that there are a lot of members on fly-in and fly-out days, which in the Senate are Monday evenings, Thursday afternoon. They're dressed pretty casually themselves, Republicans and Democrats, when they go in to vote.

Chuck Grassley on Thursday afternoons usually is very casual, wearing jeans and a shirt and a hat. Rand Paul can dress casually at times. Ted Cruz, I see him, you know, he plays basketball with his staff during the week. He'll show up, you know, after playing basketball, vote and leave. It got a lot of attention because of Fetterman and just for whatever reason.

But it's actually been common for some time that members have taken advantage of the lax enforcement in the Senate. But it's also obviously a slow news week over in the Senate, because, I mean, this has got to be literally the least significant political story of the week. And meanwhile, look, I've asked this question over and over and over again, and hopefully you can shed some light on it. The Tommy Tuberville hold on all of the military promotions, which continues to go on and on and on with greater and greater consequence. The political genius of kneecapping the military escapes me. But what also escapes me is why the Senate is letting him get away with this. Why Mitch McConnell is letting him get away with this. Why Chuck Schumer,

who last time I checked is in charge of the Senate, is letting him get away with this. So what's going on there? This has been going on for a week after week. Do they not have the ability to just say, okay, we're the majority in the Senate. We're not going to go along with this. Mitt and Chuck just sit down and say, screw this guy. Let's get this done. Why does this not happen? I mean, Schumer can absolutely schedule a vote at any time.

It'll take a few days per nomination. Yes, it will take months to do all 300 that Tim and Tom have blocked. But hey, guess what? The Senate hasn't worked a whole lot. They took five weeks off for August. They sometimes only work Tuesday through Thursday. They can work a few Mondays and Fridays and get some nominations confirmed, particularly the most significant ones, like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That needs to be confirmed by the end of the month because there's going to be a vacancy that the nation's top military position. So you think you need to resolve that. And on the Republican side, yeah, I mean, a lot of Republicans are not thrilled with what Tuberville is doing. But they know that strong-arming him won't make much of a difference. Tuberville has said as much. Some of them also believe that they may want to place holds on nominations, too. It's a powerful tool in the minority to try to get leverage.

They don't want to give up the power so even if they're uncomfortable with his tactics so this is this is something to watch though because tupperville is now threatening to use what is typically only afforded to the majority leader to actually schedule a vote a procedural vote on the nomination to be the marine corps commandant, which has been vacant because of this blockade. Now, typically that does not happen. Only the Majority Leader does it because if all the members started to schedule procedural votes, the Senate would be even more dysfunctional. But Tuberville is planning on doing that as soon as today to try to force that vote. If he could do it, force the vote, it would be a 51 vote threshold in order

for the vote to advance, the nomination to advance. It's possible he could get that if, let's say, Sinema and Manchin vote with the Republicans on this. So why would Sinema and Manchin vote with the Republicans on this issue? I mean, I get them on some of the others. Why this one? You know, it's probably because of just the fact that this is such an important vacancy that it's important to vote for the Marine Corps Commandant. But I should caution, it's unclear what they'll do at this point. So it's possible we could end up in more blockade for months on end. So let's talk about the other actually at the sort of the opposite end of the spectrum from the dress code, the

question of funding Ukraine. Of course, you know, President Zelensky is here in the United States. He's going to meet with senators. He's going to, is he going to meet with members of the House? I assume the House Democrats. Is he going to meet with Kevin McCarthy? Do we know? So he is meeting with a bipartisan group of House members, including the Speaker.

The Speaker is not having a one-on-one meeting with Zelensky. And he's also not doing what the Senate is doing. The Senate, they're having a full membership, a full body. A hundred members are meeting with him in the Senate on Thursday. Interesting contrast. Not McCarthy's plan. McCarthy said, I've asked him, why not? Why would you not do the same thing in the House?

These House Republicans, meet with them. He said he would not answer directly other than saying, they do their thing, we do our thing. So he is in a difficult spot in Ukraine because those same members who are trying to push their way in the far right, pushing out of the speakership are the ones who are the most opposed about spending another dollar in Ukraine. So he is trying to thread the needle on Ukraine. And it's just unclear how the speaker will deal with it because I asked him too, can you guarantee Ukraine will get the $24 billion that the White House requested? He would not provide that guarantee. So we need to go through it.

We need to review it. You know, this is about us trying to figure out what is, you know, how to deal with this. So he's been very noncommittal, which is much different than Mitch McConnell, a complete opposite of Mitch McConnell, who is pushing hard to get it done as part of this bill to keep the government open. So that could be another flashpoint here. If the Senate sends over a bill to keep the government open with the money for Ukraine, how does McCarthy deal with it at that point? So that is a huge question right now. It's quite a divide between the Senate and the House on this, including Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House on this.

There's no question about it. So let me start asking you some tough questions now, okay? Oh, boy. If you don't mind. Well, since you're going to be the anchor of Inside Politics Sunday, you know? Yeah. Media guy writing politics, covering politics. And this is a sincere non-snarky question. Yeah. Has the media, and I know you've given a lot of those, has the media learned anything from 2016 about how to cover Donald Trump? And I start from the premise that there's a lot of evidence that Donald Trump has broken the model in so many ways. He is so

abnormal. And both print journalism and network journalism, and I don't just include CNN, obviously NBC has had its own issues with this, ABC, everybody. How do you handle Donald Trump? Do you cover him like a normal candidate? Do you give him airtime like a normal candidate? Kate, you're now an anchor. What are your thoughts on all of this? You're going to have to navigate this for the next year. Absolutely. My view of it, and everyone has their own opinion, is that we have to cover him like the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. You can't ignore what he's saying or what he's doing because he could be president again, and he needs to be challenged. He needs to be forced to respond to some key questions

on the issues and you have to do the best you can to fact check trump because of course he is the but mildly he's loose with his facts oftentimes so you have to be very hard but it's you know i i fully know it's because he speaks a mile a minute uh he says a lot of things about a lot of things at the same time it's hard to have that ongoing fact check, but it's also a necessary part of reporting. But, you know, also, look, he has four criminal trials that will be playing out during the election season that need to be covered. Like the significant news that it is because voters need to understand whether or not the potential president here the potential president here, another president, the presidential nominee, potentially, is a convicted felon. So, and whether the charges have merit or not. Seems relevant. Seems relevant. So, you know, my, you know, it may be easier said than, it is easier said than done, of course, but I fully subscribe

to the notion that you need to cover every candidate aggressively, including the president, even including the front runner for the Republican nomination, and ignoring him or not giving him airtime because of the things he said or done, I think it is a disservice to viewers and voters. So that's my view. That's not really the choice. not a matter of ignoring him or covering him. It's also the question of platforming him, giving him access to airtime where he can just turn on the fire hose of disinformation, lie so fast that the truth limps to keep up with him. And that's the real problem, isn't it? I mean, obviously we have to cover him when he tells a lie, needs to be fact checked, but then there are the different formats for doing it. For example, you and I both remember 2016, everybody thought, let's air all of his rallies wall to wall, because when people see this, they'll realize he's completely nuts.

That turned out to be a, I would say, a major miscalculation. I don't know whether you agree or not about that. So, I mean, there are the different ways you give him live, you know, do you give him live town halls? Do you give him interviews in which he is allowed to go on and spread misinformation and then put and then put the fact checks online? I mean, clearly you cover him without necessarily platforming him. Is that a distinction in your mind? Yeah, I think you've got to make a case-by-case decision on what the situation entails. And I don't see the same level of coverage in 2016 where every rally was covered. There's been a lot of discussion about that not being the right decision, including by former president of the network. He acknowledged publicly that that was not the right decision in his view. And I don't see that happening again. But there are situations where you have to hear what he says, because it's a big key news moment. And then at that point, you really need to do the best you can to make sure you're

fact checking any things that he's saying that are not true. So again, it's, it's a case by case decision that needs to be done appropriately and aggressively. So it's a hard thing. Okay, so give me your sense about the Democratic freakout over the last week. Obviously, there was a lot of angst over these polls showing, and they continue to come, showing that Joe Biden is basically tied with Donald Trump. But despite all of this, that Trump is either tied or maybe even leading Joe Biden. And this has led to a lot of, depending on your perspective, a lot of rethinking about Biden's role as a candidate or a lot of Democratic bedwetting.

So are we in the midst of a Democratic freakout right now? And is it justified in your mind? I think we are in the midst of a Democratic freakout. But the thing is Democrats freak out pretty regularly. So it's not entirely clear whether or not it's going to freak out. But the thing is, Democrats freak out pretty regularly. So it's not entirely clear whether or not it's going to plan out. I mean, I think the Biden team believes that the race is going to change. One that really focuses on Trump versus Biden, the contrast, the abortion, the criminal investigations, January 6th, do you want to go back to the Trump era? I think the voters will

view it much differently. But he's got serious vulnerabilities. You see all the same polling is people are concerned about his age. People don't believe he's done a good job on the economy. Despite other passive, all these bills, they don't feel that it's impacted them in a positive way overall. He's struggling with black voters who are so central to his victory in 2020. Those are all issues that they have to rectify. They can't just assume that the country is going to disqualify President Trump and that will help President Biden win.

They can't assume that because who knows what will happen on the campaign trail. So I think that's why there is that level of democratic bedwetting that they believe time for the Biden team to amp it up more at this point and start to engage more forcefully with Trump. So we'll see if they do that. But is it just fan fiction, all of this speculation that they're going to replace Kamala Harris, which is not going to happen on the ticket, or that Joe Biden will drop out and we'll have President Gretchen Whitmer. I mean, do you actually, is any of this playing out in

reality as opposed to rank punditry? Is there any chance that Joe Biden does not run for re-election is what I'm getting at? You know, you always hear that. He's so stubborn, right? He believes, he beat Donald Trump. He can beat him again. He's tried so many times to become president. He's president. Why would I relinquish this now? So I cannot, unless some serious thing happens, some serious health issue or something, I just don't see him stepping aside because the polls are not looking great. In terms of dumping Kamala Harris, he had probably the opportunity to do that. Some people say maybe he should have put her on the Supreme Court instead of KBJ. And we had that position open for a new vice president. But it's

hard to see that happening. So I mean, the Biden team believes that it is just bedwetting, that things will be fine, they'll get there. And the Democrats need to relax. So but, you know, this is an unpredictable environment. So I don't think anyone who is in their position, a lot of the Democrats I talk to are relaxed right now because they're worried about what may happen. And so Team Biden is like, just chill, just chill. We got this. Manu Raju, chief congressional correspondent for CNN, who debuts as the anchor of Inside Politics today, 11 a.m. Eastern time this Sunday on CNN. Manu, thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it very, very much. Absolutely, Charlie. And I'm in Wisconsin. Definitely on Wisconsin. And hopefully the Green Bay Packers can turn things around after that loss over the weekend. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.