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- [00:00]
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- [01:03]
Joe Perdicone
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Andrew Egger
Hey, guys, it's Andrew Egger with the Bulwark, author of our Morning Shots newsletter, joined today by press pass author, our congressional correspondent, Joe Perdicone. For a Bulwark take. We're starting to see some Republicans run for the hills today. Republican Congressman Mark Amadei announced he'd be retiring, hiring from Congress at the end of this term. Amade, who is Nevada's lone Republican in the state, he just won reelection in 2024 by a lot, almost 19 points. So it's not like it's not a very red district. He's also not the only guy. We're going to talk about a few of these people. But, Joe, let's just start with, with, with Congressman Amade. Why is he leaving? What's going on?
- [01:50]
Joe Perdicone
The same reason they all leave. You know, spend more time with the family. Noble reasons, of course. No, they're. He's leaving, as are many others, and many are retiring not just to, you know, get out of politics, but also to pursue other offices back in their home states, because it sucks being in the minority and they know that's where it's headed. This is a pretty common trend if you look at past election cycles, these midterms where presidents, you know, fresh into their first term. And I guess this case Trump's Second, but it's his first.
- [02:24]
Andrew Egger
His second first.
- [02:26]
Joe Perdicone
His second, like non consecutive one. It usually happens where the majority party in the House gets booted out. And so we saw in 2018 Republicans, 39 of them retired in that cycle. Right Now, Amode makes 31. So we still got a little more to go. But that's also not including the five deaths or resignations. One of those was Mike Waltz to go be a very incompetent Cabinet official for Trump. And the other was Matt Gaetz, who couldn't become a Cabinet official. And then Marjorie Taylor Greene, left, Doug LaMalfa passed away. Mark Green, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, decided to bounce. And so, you know, there's a lot of people who just don't want to stick around, because it's not fun when you go from having power in the majority to being powerless in the minority. There's another layer of it, too, where they're in the majority now, but they don't really get to do anything that they want. Trump is steering Congress more so than any president has really in history. And so Mike Johnson does everything that Trump says, and he doesn't allow anything that Trump won't allow. And so the House doesn't get to do anything. You don't get to prioritize your little pet projects. A lot of these members of Congress, they like to do things that are very specific to their interests. But when you have this paralyzed floor, you have a very thin majority. So they're not having fun right now, and they know it's only going to get worse when they're in the minority. So, you know, go find a job elsewhere. Go get rich lobbying. There's a lot of things you can do when you come to the realization that you'll never be president.
- [04:08]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask about one thing that might be a little bit different this, this cycle than. Than in previous cycles. One thing Donald Trump has spent a lot of time doing in midterms is vengeance campaigns against various members of the House that he thinks have crossed him in one way or another in terms of, like, maga, Republican presidential primaries. I know that he has announced at least one such primary right now in the form he's trying to get Thomas Massie kicked out of the House of Representatives. Are there others happening right there? Is that less of an issue now as he basically succeeded in getting the House in his shape?
- [04:42]
Joe Perdicone
Yeah. He took a House member, Julia Letlow, and said should run against Bill Cassidy in the Senate, because I hate Bill Cassidy, which stems from Cassidy voting to convict him after January 6th impeachment, that's pretty much it. But then again, like, he can just wake up one day and hate somebody again. There's been times where he's really hated Chip Roy. Chip Roy is another congressman who's leaving this cycle to run for attorney general back in Texas. So, you know, a lot of these guys have taken the memo. And a surprising thing here is that a lot of these retirees are members of the Freedom Caucus. These are guys who should be, you know, this is their time, right? Trump, second term, like the comeback. The Freedom Caucus guys should be steering the ship in Congress, but they don't get to do anything because Trump demands absolute loyalty. And so now they just fold every time there's like a funding disagreement and it sucks. And they don't like it so poor themselves they can, you know, go do something else. I think, like talking about members retiring and the big exodus, it's always the kind of same story where they're like, I'm going to be in the minority. This sucks. But now there's the other layer of it where Trump is basically not allowing them to be in charge. And so members of the Freedom Caucus, a bunch of them are retiring and seeking office elsewhere in their back in their home states, either for Senate or governor or wherever. And they're doing this because they don't get to have fun. They should, like, their policies should be implemented right now. Like, they should be steering all these different priorities. But instead Trump just says, like, shut up, do what I say, be flexible on the Hyde Amendment. You know, he's telling them to do all these things that, like, it's the opposite of what they wanted. So, and they, and of course they can't say that. So they just go, ah, I'm running for governor. Andy Biggs running for governor in Arizona. Tom Tiffany's running in Wisconsin. Chip Roy running in Texas for Attorney General. There's so many. Buddy Carter's running for Senate in Georgia. And so it's just like, it's not fun now. It's going to be even less fun for them if in the likely event that the House flips to Democratic control. So, you know, get out of dodge.
- [07:02]
Andrew Egger
It's weird to me how, you know, Trump still sort of enjoys this reputation on the right as, like, at last we've got like a real hard charging conservative Republican in there, not like one of these establishment goons. But there's this weird dynamic right now where it's like the more of like an empty suit. Whatever you say, Mr. President. Brand A Given Republican has, the more comfortable they are in Congress right now because they can just go along with whatever they can be like, oh, you know, Trump wants us to not make a big deal about the Hyde Amendment right now. That's fine, whatever. Trump wants us to not make a big deal about H1B visas right now. Yeah, sure, why not? And it's the, it's these Freedom Caucus guys that you're talking about who, whose brand is completely incompatible with the moment because a big part of their base wants them to back the President no matter what. And a big part of their personal base, the people who got them, got excited about them in the first place, want them to be really hard charging guys for all these priorities and stuff. So they're kind of stuck. They're, somebody's getting mad at them no matter what they do. On that topic, I just wanted to bring up Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, who, you know, she was like sort of the on the front wave of all of this. Obviously she's now gone. She's not just retiring, she's actually left the House, but she has continued to, she's not just sort of like ball and quietly gone home or run for a different office. She has kept being out there kind of like clanging this gong that, you know, Donald Trump's promises to the MAGA base have been a bunch of lies and empty promises. And I mean, she, she, she got up and said MAGA was a lie.
- [08:26]
Joe Perdicone
No, MAGA is, I, I, I think people are realizing it was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people.
- [08:34]
Andrew Egger
It's not about making America great again. There's no like populist agenda right now. It's just a bunch of billionaire pleasing stuff. I mean, really hot stuff from Marjorie. Where do you see her fitting into all this? Is this just kind of like the last gasp of Marjorie Taylor Greene? Does she have some kind of future in the Republican Party or what's up with her these days?
- [08:51]
Joe Perdicone
So she's the anomaly. So when we look at the Tea Party, Trump populist, Hate that term. But Trump populist types, where they, hey, came in with all these ideals about being super right wing, implementing, you know, Christian nationalism of some kind, they've all kind of like gone on their different paths. So the ones who liked legislating and wanted to like, do it and make a difference, like your Chip Roys, they're very frustrated and they're getting the hell out because this is not what they get. They're not getting to do what they set out to do. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the people who, probably the only one who got so fully disenchanted with what she was doing that she just couldn't handle it anymore, which is sort of commendable in its own twisted way. And then you have like the yappers, the guys who like to be on tv. They love to talk about how much they love Trump and they just like having fun and they don't really care about the policy, but they rode that like Tea Party MAGA populist wave or whatever to get into Congress and they're sticking around. And then I guess there's another layer of like the Thomas Massey types who's like a OGT party conservative who just says, screw you, you're not going to get rid of me. I'm sticking around whether you like it or not. So that's how you kind of see this divide where you've seen a lot of these more conservative members say they're retiring. The ones who are sticking around, like in another life, they would just be the old Bush establishment Republicans if it meant they got to be on TV the most. They're just like, they figured out how to be on tv. They like to be on tv. They're going to stick around. Tim Burchett being one of those, for.
- [10:33]
Andrew Egger
Example, I don't get it, man. I hate being on TV. TV sucks. TVs like the worst thing you could be doing at any given time. Nobody pays attention unless you say something embarrassing and then suddenly you're the, you're the flavor of the day. Couldn't be me. Well, on the subject of Thomas Massie, real quick, I'm very interested to see how that primary goes. I think he might have a little more staying power there than people give him credit for. Usually when Trump tries to squish these people like bugs, he squishes them like bugs. We'll see. I' not so sure that's going to happen at Thomas Massie, but that's. That is a topic for another video. We'll keep on this. Like, like, like Joe said, We're like 80% of the way to the sort of benchmark for bad cycle retirements and exoduses. We'll keep following along. Thanks, Joe, for coming on and thanks to you all out there for watching. One other quick thing before we go. If you like this content, get ready. Tim, Sarah and JVL are coming to the Lone Star State for a one night show in Dallas on March 18th, another one night show in Austin on March 19th. Tickets are on sale now. You can head to the bulwark.com events for more info about all that. Thanks and we'll see you all next time.
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