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- [00:00]
A
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B
Hey everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark. Here it is Sunday afternoon. I'm with my buddy Andrew Egger, author of the Morning Shots newsletter. He was an usher at church this morning and we are going to be talking about Donald Trump. He's on the cusp of just making it official and saying that there is no legislative branch anymore and that he is just going to do whatever he wants. And he did so by making I guess a quasi threat to Congress around the SAVE Act. It's in a bleep this morning. So Donald Trump, our president is in the middle of a war in Iran where I guess we're bombing water desalination plants in Iran. Wanna make sure people can't have drinking water there because it was important that we, I don't know, stop them from attacking our new friends in Qatar while that is ongoing. So you'd think the commander in chief would have a lot in his hands. He's also watching Weekend Fox at French. You might know that the secretary of war, that was his job before Secretary of war, his co host of the weekend Fox and Friends. So he's watching Weekend Fox and Friends and live leading it. And this is what he wrote. Great job by hard working Scott Pressler, insurrectionist on Fox and Friends, talking about using the filibuster or talking filibuster in order to pass the Save America act, an 88% issue with all voters. It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. Must go to the front of the line. I as president will not sign any other bills until this is passed. And not the watered down version. Go for the gold. Must have voter id, proof of citizenship, no mail in ballots except for military disability, no men and women's sports like this. Kind of a random right turn there. No transgender mutualization for children. Do not fail President Donald Trump. Just one element of context while I get your take on this. DHS is still shut down right now. Like we have a partial government shutdown. So you'd assume that no bills until the SAVE act would include a bill that would fully open up the government. Among several war funding bill, among like several other pretty important priorities. So, Andrew, I guess before I get your take on it, for the uninitiated, I'm sure most people watching this know, but the Save America act just want to give people a quick rundown of what, what that is.
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A
Yeah, I mean, so honestly, he kind of went through the main provisions there. I mean, the baseline thing here is it is like the most extensive national voter ID bill that's ever been pushed. The idea is that in every state, you would not only need to show a driver's license to vote, but in fact, in order to register to vote, you would need to show proof of citizenship. So you need to show like a passport or a birth certificate in order to be able to register in the first place. So, like, not only is it voter id, it's in fact somewhat more stringent than that. And then as the President got into. Are some of these tacked on provisions as well?
- [03:19]
B
What percentage of Egger family members like uncles, aunts, cousins, do you think have a hard copy of their birth certificate?
- [03:26]
A
I know that I have mine, but it took a lot of kind of white knuckle rooting around to find it the last time I needed it to show at the DMV for proof of citizenship. Yeah, I mean, that's the baseline thing here. Right. Is like, people are issued these documents, but a lot of people don't necessarily have them, don't necessarily know where they are. So this is kind of the Democratic rejection of the bill is based on the idea that it would disenfranchise a lot of people who are legal voters and who do have a right to vote. So that's, that's been kind of the substance of the, of the fight over the law itself. Now, there's another thing in here which, which is, you know, this, because of this, because there's been this, like, broad gap between Republicans and Democrats on voter ID forever. And on this bill in particular, this has always been seen as kind of a messaging bill because it can't get over the filibuster in the Senate, and because, uh, even though Trump has for a long time been calling for Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, it kind of seemed like he was settling into being kind of grumpily okay with the fact that the Republican Senate doesn't want to do that. They don't think it's in their interests in the long term. And as recently as a month or so ago the thing that, that Trump was saying about the Save America act was even if they don't pass it, I'm still going to basically make a lot of this stuff happen through Executive Order. And so this is kind of a weird new swerve where like instead of that being the strategy now apparently he has, I don't know what who told him what that has changed his mind on this. Maybe he was just watching Scott Pressler on Fox and Friends, who knows? But it seems like now he has really recommitted to this idea that like, no, this has to go through the Senate. I'm going to re establish my full court press on John Thune and the Republicans over there and really get them to try as hard as I can to get them to throw out this filibuster and pass this thing. So who knows what that, what will come of that. Thune so far has been very, very, very recalcitrant about saying, sorry, Mr. President, we're not going to do this, but you never know.
- [05:11]
B
Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on the kind of light authoritarian element of this, which we'll get to in a second. But just really quick, first a few political items. Can we pull up Scott Pressler on the screen just for folks who don't know who this is? This is him. He's a homosexual insurrectionist. He was there at the Capitol on January 6th. He also ran an anti Sharia law rally, which is kind of interesting. That was a big thing for Republicans for a while. We're not gonna bring Sharia law to America. I agree with that. I don't want Sharia law in America. But it's kind of noteworthy that like our biggest allies now that we are like spending blood and treasure to protect are Sharia law countries themselves. Just a little side point that I have.
- [05:54]
A
Scott is such a physically like remarkable looking person. He's like 6:3 or so. He's like very tall and he wears cowboy boots that make him even slightly taller. And he has like waist length straight hair. His hair is like as long as a regular person is tall. He's very soft spoken. He's very kind of mild mannered. One of his big things was the voter registration in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 election, which I guess went pretty well for him. You know, good job for you, Scott. But yes, one of the weirder, like ancillary characters in MAGA politics.
- [06:21]
B
Yeah, weird figure. The other subplot to this, which is fake and forced maybe, but it's somewhat related to the Texas Senate Runoff and the Republican side, where basically the candidates are, John Cornyn is the more established and traditional candidate. Then you have Ken Paxton. We've talked about him a lot of the corrupt MAGA challenger. And Trump indicated, kind of did a trial balloon that he's going to endorse Cornyn and Paxton should drop out. And Paxton was basically like, sure, I'll drop out if you pass the SAVE Act. It all had, like a feel of kayfabe to it. You know, it just all kind of felt like it was another pressure point in pushing this through the Senate. So the answer that I think the Occam's raise, their answer for why they want to push this through the Senate so much is that they really do believe it will help them in the midterms. And, like, they feel like if Trump just does it by executive order, a lot of these states will just not follow the order or challenge at court. Most of the states, really, and it might help them still for Trump to do it by executive order on the margins in Iowa or whatever in the Senate race where they have a Republican governor. But I assume that's why this is the one case where Trump feels passionately about Congress acting. I don't. Do you have another theory?
- [07:37]
A
No, I think, I think you're totally right. And just by the way, there is a sort of strange, like, bank shot element to that line from, from Paxton too, because, you know, Ken Paxton's whole, like, I am the true MAGA guy in this race line. And the line of a lot of people who are like him, who are currently in the Senate or who are running for the Senate, is like, there is this kind of like, MAGA populist rage over the fact that, like, kind of the old school establishment Republican leadership in the Senate, even though they are very MAGA now in certain ways, you know, they embrace the President wholeheartedly, but they still have this kind of like, old school appreciation for the filibuster, for the legislative filibuster. And so, you know, one kind of what Paxton is saying when he's saying, yeah, I'll drop out if you guys pass the SAVE act is he's, he's basically saying, you guys should really be putting me in there instead of John Cornyn, member of Senate leadership, because John Cornyn's the kind of guy who would rather preserve the filibuster than get this like, MAGA policy stuff passed, you know, so it's, it's kind of like a weird. It's like, too cute because it's not. He's not really going out and saying it, but that's kind of the idea there. It's like, I can't believe Trump would endorse. Would think of endorsing Cornyn when Cornyn is crosswise of him on this, like, very key thing that Trump wants, the filibuster. I mean, this is like a constant.
- [08:45]
B
Like, I mean, it seems like it works, though. It seems like the gambit kind of worked and the ball's moving a little faster from the Trump.
- [08:53]
A
Yeah, maybe in that sense. Not in the. Not in the sense for Paxton that it seems like it's making him any likely to endorse him or anything like that. But yes, I think it has gotten him back. Eye on that bill.
- [09:02]
B
So obviously, the concerning part about this, as mentioned before, we're in the middle of a war that he started by choice. We don't have Department of Homeland Security fully funded as we are taping this right now. There's a bomb threat at the Kansas City airport. A lot of reports, a lot of other airports of very long lines. Tsa. This is part of what is funded by dhs. Number one. I think it shows in the normal politician critique of Trump, it shows somebody whose priorities are insanely out of whack given the very urgent matters on cost of living, safety in the country, war. You would think that those would be things that you would want to work on and not say, hey, we're going to put that on the back burner for a while until we get this vote by mail bill passed. That feels out of touch in a normal politician out of touch way. It also just back to my point though, of he doesn't want Congress to work, actually. And if you're Donald Trump, you're like, the more I can just consolidate power myself. Like, this is an easy threat to make because he doesn't actually want Congress to pass anything. Congress isn't gonna be able to pass the SAVE Act. I mean, they have like the tiniest majority in the House and the Senate. They would. And some of those senators are Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. And they would need 97% of the Republicans in the House and the Senate to force this and to break the filibuster to make it through. So, like, it seems to me that Donald Trump is basically saying, I'm not doing anything that Congress wants. I'm just gonna go it alone. And I don't know, that alarms me a little bit. I don't know about you.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah, no, it is funny the degree to which, like, he spends long Stretches of time basically ignoring Congress, basically forgetting they exist. And then every once in a while it like occurs to him, hey, wouldn't it be actually pretty helpful to my agenda if instead of me having to do this unilaterally, I could just get every Republican in the House and every Republican in the Senate to back this piece of legislation? We could get it through that way. And, oh yeah, there's this filibuster that stands in the way. And so anything that's actually going to get passed other than budget bills is going to need some buy in. And wouldn't it be great if they got rid of that filibuster and he abandons it, does one more like two week full court press about the filibuster and then they rebuff him, and then he goes back to his previous thing of forgetting that Congress exists. And I guess that's what, that's the cycle that we are in right now. There was another thing. I mean, you mentioned the DHS turnover, where he got rid of Kristi Noem and nominated Mark Wayne Mullen to go in and be the new DHS secretary. In his tweet announcing that, where he said, you know, Christie's out and Mark Wayne's in, it was amazing. It was amazing how he was basically like, mark Wayne Mullen is going to be in there as the new secretary, effective March, whatever, 2026. You know, like, he's the CEO of the company, completely just ignoring the whole advice and consent process that he has to go through, has to be confirmed by the Senate. And that is pretty much par for the course for how Trump kind of just in his mind thinks about how Congress works right now, which is he doesn't think about it unless he absolutely has to.
- [11:53]
B
One of the big conundrums here, I had a friend who texted me the other day, and I think for somebody who's a casual observer of this stuff, this was a reasonable question to make, which was they're asking me, like, hey, this is crazy. Like, what Trump is doing right now, he's just totally shooting from the hip. He's doing it himself. Why haven't any of the Republicans asserted themselves on this? And part of that is, well, that's been a problem for 10 years now. But the other part is that there's this kind of paradox at the moment where, like, the types of the Republicans that would be the most interested in, like, reasserting some power at this moment, where Trump is acting the most, you know, on the, on the cutting edge of his authoritarian aspirations, like the types of Republicans who would be most interested in dialing that back, your Thom Tillis or whatever, they're the ones that are also the most interested in bombing Iran.
- [12:44]
A
Right.
- [12:45]
B
So I'm sorry to laugh, but it's like, that's like the problem.
- [12:48]
A
Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham. Today we're going to win Israel in the United States.
- [12:53]
B
You just wait to see what comes in the next two weeks. The next two weeks, meaning what? We're going to blow the hell out of these people.
- [13:03]
A
There are some real cheerleaders for.
- [13:04]
B
Yeah, like bloodlust for bombing Iran. Lindsey Graham has basically. And so like, you know, with the exception of Tom Massey and Rand, who are libertarians, like besides them, like the types of people that you would name, like if you just look at other examples and there have been so few Republican acts of courage where like Republicans in the Senate at least have bucked him. Like things in Ukraine or whatever. It's been McConnell or on Matt Gaetz, you know, it's been like McConnell. It's been Tillis every once in a while. Susan Collins mostly, she's just as concerned. And it's like it's all Iran, Iran hawks, you know. So to me it just seems like he's going to be able to keep continuing down this path with total carte blanche with a partially shut down DH government, the shutdown dhs, with terror threats at home. And we're gonna wait. He's just gonna not care what Congress does because his demand of them is something that they're not capable of doing, which is passing this ridiculous act.
- [13:59]
A
Yeah. And when you say like the group that's most likely to buck him, I think on a couple of those things, especially related to foreign policy, you know, you've, you're right about that. Has been the moments when a couple of senators have shown, you know, some gumption. But, but there is also this weird dynamic in the party now and this has been increasingly true over the last couple of years where like it's the more sort of like establishment guys who don't necessarily really see eye to eye with Trump on different stuff, who aren't really like, you know, mainlining the sort of angst that drives their base. They see him as like their political meal ticket. Right. Because like they don't actually have to really understand what motivates their base in order to like keep some like upstart MAGA challenger from primaring them. As long as Trump is happy with them, as long as Trump will still endorse and like get out the vote for them. So that has been like a long standing thing. And instead the people that you have more often seen like breaking with Trump have been some of the like real true believers out there on the right. It's like the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world, but there aren't that many of those in Congress and especially in the Senate. Right. So like, so you have seen this sort of like, you know, isolationist wing of the, of the MAGA movement get really mad about a lot of the stuff that's happening right now and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson talking about that. But Marjorie's out of Congress, Tucker's not in Congress, obviously. You know, it's very much more just sort of like a base and a media phenomenon than anything in the actual podcast.
- [15:19]
B
President get a vote. One last thing he did lop onto the SAVE act in addition to obviously banning the Banning vote by mail. We don't need to spend any time on this. But this is like ridiculous. I mean like a lot of states, I'm from Colorado, that's where I grew up, they have almost universal vote by mail now. Nobody has made any accusations that there's anything afoot there. And like the only, famously at this moment, I guess the only person, person in prison in Colorado for doing shenanigans around elections is MAGA Tina Peters, who Jared Polis is talking about pardoning. Don't do it, Jared Polis. So it's absurd, but they're lapping on top of that the trans stuff, which shows that this is really just a messaging thing and we don't need to spend any time on it. We should at least mention he calls it mutilization. Is that right?
- [16:08]
A
The word would be mutilation.
- [16:09]
B
Is that a word?
- [16:09]
A
It is not mutilation. Mutilation is the, is the mutilation. Mutilization is some other undreamt of thing.
- [16:15]
B
I guess we'll keep an eye on it. That's Andrew Egger. Thanks for popping on on Sunday. I'm Tim Miller. Subscribe to the feed. Give us a like, tell us what we were wrong about in the comments. We can take it. We're big boys and we'll be back soon because a lot of shit's happening. See y' all then.
- [16:31]
A
Peace.