← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Inside Matt Gaetz’s Congressional Coup
00:34:33
This week, Kevin McCarthy lost his Speakership in an ouster led by the Florida congressman. How did Gaetz become, briefly, one of the most powerful people in Washington?
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- [00:00]
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- [01:15]
Susan Glaser
So on Monday, when the beginning of this crazy week was going down, I was actually up on the Hill, guys, with our beloved colleague and renaissance man, Larry Wright, talking about his new novel, Mr. Texas, which is a reminder. We work with such amazing people, but Larry Wright, I think, has got to be the most amazing of them, right? He's a screenwriter, he's a playwright, he's a novelist, and of course, he's a National Magazine Award winning nonfiction writer, too.
- [01:46]
Jane Mayer
Larry is just a genius.
- [01:48]
Evan Osnos
I always come away from my encounters with Larry feeling boring and unproductive.
- [01:53]
Susan Glaser
The book is incredible. Dead on. Look at very Ripped from the headlines, Texas Today. One of the main figures is a speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. And we're having this conversation in the shadow of the Capitol. The other day, when the motion to vacate against the House speaker here in Washington was being filed, I thought, wow. Talk about fiction imitating life imitating fiction. Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Susan Glaser and I'm joined by my colleagues, Evan Osnos and Jane Maier.
- [02:36]
Evan Osnos
Hey, Susan.
- [02:36]
Jane Mayer
Hey, Susan.
- [02:41]
Susan Glaser
So Kevin McCarthy out as speaker of the House of Representatives. Possibly the most impossible job he in Washington today. His fall was swift, humiliating, unprecedented, and in some ways utterly predictable.
- [02:56]
David Remnick
Unfortunately, 4% of our conference can join all the Democrats and dictate who could be the Republican speaker in this House. I don't think that rule is good for the institution, but apparently I'm the only one.
- [03:11]
Susan Glaser
I would point out, by the way, it was Kevin McCarthy who agreed to that rule as a concession to get the job in the first place. But let's step back a bit, guys. This has never happened before in American history. It seems like just one person can take down an entire branch of the U.S. government. This Week that person was Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. If McCarthy was the clear loser, Gaetz certainly felt like he was the winner.
- [03:41]
Evan Osnos
Kevin McCarthy is a feature of the swamp. He has risen to power by collect special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors. We are breaking the fever now and we should elect a Speaker who's better.
- [03:56]
Susan Glaser
For months, Matt Gaetz has toyed with Kevin McCarthy. In January, you'll remember it took 15 ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Only after Matt Gaetz relented and got the concession of being able to call a vote at any time to remove Kevin McCarthy. That's exactly what what happened this week, Evan, didn't McCarthy hand Matt Gaetz the gun with which he used to shoot him a few months later?
- [04:23]
Evan Osnos
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, in the Chekhovian sense, this thing was guaranteed to happen. The gun was sort of lying there. The word, I think at the top of everybody's list, and you mentioned it, is humiliation. I mean, that has been the dominant sensation in Washington. I think you guys might agree, over the last few days, I mean, he's been sort of politically defrocked. It's not the end of his career as a congressman, but you do have to go back to the 19th century. In fact, I mean, I did find this kind of interesting, that not only is he the first person to get kicked out, but he was the shortest speaker since 1876 when somebody died of tuberculosis. So I will tell you that just my sense of him is that there was always something sort of childlike about Kevin McCarthy. You know, people will sometimes talk about the fact that he sort of seemed to be play acting, but what I'm actually getting at is something a little bit graver, which is that he was living in a World of no consequences. That's how he operated day to day. He would promise anything to get out of a jam. He would say, yes, we're gonna do this. He agreed to allow himself to be removed by a single member proposing to vacate the chair and putting it to a vote. And ultimately, this is a case of his first encounter really, with accountability.
- [05:44]
Susan Glaser
Well, it's interesting that to frame it as accountability when someone like Gates is taking names and taking numbers. But you mentioned history. Evan, let's talk about that for one second because this is a historic moment here. Once again, we've sort of crashed through one of the perceived kind of no go zones in American politics. Jane. It's not only the shortest speaker since 1876, it's the first time since 1910 that there was any kind of effort to put a vote like this on the floor, a motion to vacate the chair back in 1910. Joseph Cannon defeated the motion to vacate and actually went on to become one of the most legendary and powerful speakers of the House. In fact, one of the main House office buildings today is named for Joe Cannon. I don't think anybody's gonna be naming any office buildings after Kevin McCarthy anytime soon. So, Evan, why does McCarthy say that this happened?
- [06:39]
Evan Osnos
Well, I mean, the most immediate precipitating fact in his telling is that he made the decision to keep the government open. He sided with Democrats in doing that, and as he would put it, that put him then on the path of confrontation with these eight members of his own party.
- [06:58]
Susan Glaser
Where do you think this falls down in the history of recent dysfunction? Right. In some ways, it's. It's not only been predictable since the start of Kevin McCarthy's tenure in January, but really, if you look at the last three Republican speakers of the House, you had McCarthy, you had John Boehner, and you had Paul Ryan. So where do we classify this sort of unprecedented act?
- [07:23]
Jane Mayer
I mean, it's. Unprecedented is the word we keep using. I just remember when I joined a newspaper, you were never supposed to use the word unprecedented because you could almost always find, if you looked carefully, a precedent. But in fact, we're at a point where we are seeing a level of dysfunction that is pushing through the barriers historically. And, you know, I mean, I guess rather than naming a building for McCarthy, you know, he might get a plaque next to Scaramucci. He's kind of the Scaramucci of speakers, short, almost the shortest one in there. As you say, Susan, this is something that is not a one off. It's been building. This is the third Republican speaker we've seen basically to face an upright rebellion from the right flank. The previous two stepped down of their own will when they saw the guillotine was being sharpened. And this one just plain walked right into it, which has actually been interesting. It occasioned the way Washington works, among other things. What people really have contempt for are politicians who are no good at their game, no matter how terrible the thing is they're doing. If they're successful at it, you get a fair amount of credit. But people in washing are talking about how basically, how could he be so incompetent? How could he face a vote like that and not have lined up the numbers and pulled over, you know, lined up the Democrats? He was an incompetent speaker in every way. It was clear that he was going to be ousted and he wasn't prepared and out he went. But I think it's interesting to think of it as accountability, because in a way, what I see is something sort of different, which is just that this right flank, they cannot be satisfied. There is no speaker that will be okay for them because they don't actually have policy proposals. They don't really want something. What they want is to tear everything down.
- [09:25]
Susan Glaser
This is a great point, I think, about sort of the chaos Caucus. Right. And is that ultimately the goal? That's sort of what you're saying? Yeah, it is.
- [09:32]
Jane Mayer
I mean, this is. I mean, in some ways, it even goes back before these three speakers. If you take a look, if you're stepping way back for 40 years or 50 years even, there's been an assault from the right on the idea that government does good. And what you're looking at are people who don't want government to succeed. They want to oppose the very idea of what Congress does. Call it the swamp, basically. Not compromise, not make policy, don't go to committee meetings. All they do is go on television and attack government. They've succeeded at what they want, which is showing that government can be made dysfunct.
- [10:11]
Evan Osnos
I mean, Susan, you know, Congress, you literally edited a newspaper about Congress. So what did you make of the ouster?
- [10:18]
Susan Glaser
Well, you know, I think it's sort of an example of the revolution ultimately eating its own right, you know, and that we have sort of more and more performative displays of outrage. Right. You had the Newt Gingrich revolution. That's what happened when I was working on Capitol Hill at Roll call newspaper in 1994. Republicans take over Congress for the first time in four decades. It's essentially an assault on the establishment at the time and changing the rules, basically eliminating sort of lifelong tenure for committee chairs, which was the core of how Democrats ruled Congress for many decades. Newt Gingrich comes in, he blows that up. He has a bunch of young alkalites, including people like John Boehner. They're the revolutionaries, but they stay in power long enough, and then they become ousted by the next generation of revolutionaries. And I think that's part of the story here, is that the cycle of that Republicans have gotten themselves in, because this is a Republican story. That's the other thing that I think we really have to talk about. It's very much about the nature of Republicans today, and in particular, this very radicalized conference of Republicans in the House of Representatives. Remember that a majority of them stepped over the shattered glass of the U.S. capitol on January 6, 2021, and voted to go along with Donald Trump's sort of fever dream about a rigged election that wasn't rig. That's the kind of caucus that we're dealing with here. And so Evan Jane was making this point about, can anyone run the Republicans in the House of Representatives today? Can anyone get to 2018? Or are we actually just looking at the breakdown of the Republican majority in the House, that it just doesn't work?
- [12:06]
Evan Osnos
Yeah, I remember actually it was a Democrat who made the point that there is a sort of structural downward spiral built into the current Republican rhetoric, which is to say that if your theoretical objective as a party is to make a government that does less and less and less, that is an unbounded process, meaning it can go on essentially forever, because the government is not going to vanish, whereas Democrats are in the opposite position. Whereas if they're sort of core commitment, their basic project is to try to create a government that does more things more effectively, then that is something in which they are evaluated based on the success of that. And so that, in its own way, is a check on their ability to get further and further out of the ordinary bandwidth of politics. Because if you promise that you're going to do something and it doesn't happen, then eventually you sort of regulate your behavior and become more normal. You're not seeing that on the right. What happens on the right is that eventually, as you said, and this has been one of our most durable rules on this show, is that there is always somebody who is more radical than you are.
- [13:20]
Jane Mayer
I mean, and it goes along, of course, with the redistricting and the gerrymandering of these districts. So if you look at Matt Gaetz's district, which Is the first district in Florida, the most sort of northern and western district in the state. Very, very conservative place. His district is what they call 38R, meaning it is 38 higher Republican voters. You cannot be a Democrat and win there. And so the only challenges come from the further and further right wing challenges to whoever the Republican incumbent is. And this is how Gates gets in.
- [13:56]
Susan Glaser
Well, let's talk about who is Matt Gaetz because he is a sort of a TV monger with a pompadour, but he's also has real aspirations. Right. He seems to be using this campaign against Kevin McCarthy, possibly launch a campaign for governor in his home state of Florida. Evan, who is Matt Gaetz and why is he doing this?
- [14:21]
Evan Osnos
Well, it's useful I think to go back and look at his origins and his first run. I mean he comes out of a political family in Florida, which is ironic. He sort of positions himself as being the ultimate enemy of the establishment. Well actually his father was a major figure in the Florida state senate. He was the president of the Senate at one point. Not too long ago, Matt Gaet came up through jobs in politics. The father was known as Papa Gates and Matt was known. Once you hear this, it's hard to unhear it as baby Gates and his father made his money running a for profit hospice company.
- [15:03]
Jane Mayer
Nice.
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Evan Osnos
Just worth lingering on that for a second. But I think what's really important is that when Matt Gaetz then finally kind of makes his way up through these minor political jobs and runs for office for the first time, one of the very first things he says in his first advertisement is, and I'm just gonna read it here cuz it's so important to hear it. He says, I'm running for Congress because we can't trust Washington, we can't trust the spineless politicians. And then the narrator comes on and gives what I think is almost like a caricature of the contemporary right wing message. Conservative Matt Gaetz will fight to pass.
- [15:36]
Jane Mayer
Open Kerry, kill Muslim terrorists and build the wall.
- [15:41]
Evan Osnos
So he was in his own way a kind of distilled, concentrated, thick extract of what the Republican message had become by the time Donald Trump came into office.
- [15:53]
Jane Mayer
I mean, I just wanted to add that he's not just a nepotism kid, kind of basically he's from a wealthy family, he self funds, he puts in $200,000 of his own money. And there's a kind of a kind of a playboy rich kid kind of fooling around at it aspect of him as he comes into office.
- [16:13]
Susan Glaser
Matt Gaetz, I Think more than almost anyone else who came in during the Trump era, kind of symbolized what this new era of all Trump, all the time politicians would become in Capitol Hill. He was famous for going on Fox News and sort of being Trumpier than thou as a way to make his name and to get attention. During Trump's presidency, he has continued to sort of flaunt his relations, relationship with Donald Trump. He told reporters that he was speaking with Trump throughout his successful, as it turned out, coup against Kevin McCarthy. So is this Trumpian style in American politics? Is that part of the story of what's going on here? Evan?
- [16:54]
Evan Osnos
I think on some level, you have to recognize that they were both the outgrowth of this underlying. And I know we're using a lot of sort of biological metaphors here, but there's this sort of underlying primordial soup that created Donald Trump and created Matt Ga kind of, to use Cassidy Hutchinson's great term, she described Gates as an unserious politician. I mean, it's a very gentle way, but it captures a lot. It captures this basic contempt for the job that they have run for and ultimately won. And so, yeah, I think we should talk about the question of whether Trump changed Gates, but I think the fact that Gates even existed at all is partly the story of how Trump came to dominate our politics.
- [17:40]
Susan Glaser
Jane, One thing that Gates has in common, of course, with Donald Trump is that he's been the subject of multiple scandals and investigations. He's called himself the most investigated man in the U.S. congress. Kevin McCarthy has suggested that that's actually one of the reasons behind this coup against him, that Matt Gaetz was mad at McCarthy for allowing an ethics investigation of him to continue inside the house. What are the allegations against Matt Gaetz?
- [18:08]
Jane Mayer
Well, he's been accused of trafficking with underage girls. Basically, the Justice Department investigated him and did not bring charges. It's worth saying, but there is this ongoing ethics investigation of him. From what I can tell, he is personally furious with McCarthy. So you have to believe there's some very personal thing going on here, and I would not be surprised if it was. I mean, he's like a locker room guy who goes around boasting about, you know, the women that he's had sex with, and he's shown pictures to people in the house, and he's now married. But, I mean, he's acted, you know, in a really vulgar way. Not that that usually gets you an ethics investigation, but that investigation in the House is ongoing, and I imagine a huge source of grievance.
- [19:02]
Susan Glaser
Well, a lot of McCarthy supporters, of course, were furious at the quick downfall that was in the end, administered to him by Mat Gates. Do you think, Evan, that there's anything to make of these sort of heated responses to Matt Gaetz and there's people talking about kicking him out of the Republican Conference or that he would face even more serious censure? Do you think there will be any action that backfires on him in the end? It was one guy who brought down the leadership. How can anyone lead in the Republican conference if there's no consequences to a rogue actor like Gates?
- [19:38]
Evan Osnos
Well, it's telling to me that, I mean, historically, when you looked at the impeachment, for instance, of Bill Clinton, that it was Newt Gingrich who ultimately suffered the greatest consequences. He was the architect of that effort. So there is some history in which when you do something that kind of violates even the flexible appetites of Washington, sometimes the system kind of rejects you. And it's possible. I mean, I just noticed Newt Gingrich himself, actually, who is still, after all, talking in politics politics and still has a decent sense of where the Republican Party is. He was the one saying, no, Matt Gaetz really has no future in this party. But I'm not convinced. I'll be honest, Jane. I think it's equally possible that Matt Gaetz goes on and continues, and if it wasn't him, it would have been somebody else.
- [20:27]
Jane Mayer
I mean, I think you have to say he's been very wily. He is dangerously irresponsible and cynical and a totally attention getter, but he's not a fool. He knows the rules of the House and he's used them very ably to pull off something that really was an incredible coup. Of all the sort of commentary I've read about this, one of the things that I thought was most interesting was an interview with Theda Skocpol. I don't know if you guys saw this. She's a political scientist at Harvard, and what she's describing all of this as is the natural sum of the Tea Party movement. And what she says is that people didn't understand something about the Tea Party movement. Many people looked at it as a movement about economics where working class people were saying that they were ripped off and they wanted, you know, to cut government spending and all that kind of stuff. She says it's not aboutit was never really about economics. It was about white and mostly male grievance, about a changing America and about the fact that the country is. The demographics are changing, the status of being a White guy in America was not just a sure thing anymore because there was more equality for women and for people of color. And so basically what she's saying is that the people who ran on Tea Party platforms were never going to be able to satisfy the base because it wasn't even just about government spending. It was about people saying, I'm going to stop America from changing, and they can't. And so you get further and further right. And more and more anger, and you get people like Trump who are just playing directly to white grievance. And a lot of what fueled it was, of course, the election of Obama, which really, you know, triggered the Tea Party movement. And again, it was kind of an outpouring of racial hatred. But this is not satisfiable, if there is such a word. I mean, you can't. There's no policy that you can give these people to make them happy. And I really feel that that is Gates is playing to them, too.
- [22:40]
Susan Glaser
All right, the doom loop. So let's take a quick break on that note, and when we come back, we'll talk about whether we can break out of the doom loop and what's next for House Republicans after toppling their own speaker.
- [23:04]
David Remnick
Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlamagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [23:37]
Susan Glaser
So we talked a little bit, guys, about Trump, but actually, Donald Trump literally jumped into the middle of this House speaker race, very unusually with a middle of the night tweet endorsing his longtime ally, Jim Jordan. In the speaker's race. Right now, the contest is between Jim Jordan of Ohio, Steve Scalise, the current majority leader from Louisiana. Evan, do you have any handicapping for us? What does it mean that these are the two candidates and can one of them actually emerge on top?
- [24:06]
Evan Osnos
Well, it is interesting that they are going about it in very different fashion. I mean, Steve Scalise is doing a sort of traditional speaker campaign. He hasn't been on tv, actually sort of took days off until just recently. He's been on the phone talking to other members of Congress. And Jim Jordan actually is this avatar of the new way, the Trump way, which is to say he has an audience of one. He courted this one guy, he got his endorsement, and now he is going outside the process. I mean, at this point, I think you'd have to say that it looks pretty likely that it's more likely to be Jim Jordan than it is Steve Scalise.
- [24:46]
Susan Glaser
Huh? Do you agree with that, Gene?
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Jane Mayer
I mean, I don't. I mean, actually, I need to ask you, Susan, because you really follow the House more closely. But I do have the sense that if Jim Jordan becomes Speaker of the House, it's got to be a gift to the Democrats in their efforts to take back the majority of the House in 2024. Jim Jordan is, again, someone who is gifted at one thing, tearing things down. He is not somebody I see as likely to be a successful and inspiring leader. But, Susan, I'm really curious. What do you think? Because you really do know Congress in and out.
- [25:23]
Susan Glaser
Well, Jordan really is essentially been one of the powers behind the Freedom Caucus that in some ways has sort of taken control of the House Republican Conference over the last few years. And Jordan has been a key driver in investigations that Republicans have launched. I think he will be all in on the impeachment inquiry against President Biden. I'm sure that's one of the reasons that Donald Trump is endorsing Jim Jordan in this speaker's race. And it's fascinating that Trump, he's got so many plates in the air right now, right, Evan? He's got these four criminal cases. All week long, we've been watching the spectacle of Trump showing up for his civil fraud trial in New York State related to the Trump Organization business. And Trump, in the middle of all this, has decided also to plant himself right into the middle of the politicking of the House Republicans. He says he may even come here to Washington next week to talk to directly to Republicans in the middle of the race. There's one congressman out there who has been publicly campaigning and saying Donald Trump should be our House Speaker. People love to cite this rule that you don't actually have to be a member of the House of Representatives to be speaker, although I should note, it's never been tested. So, Evan, help us understand. Why is it you think that Donald Trump is getting right in the middle of this speaker race?
- [26:48]
Evan Osnos
Well, I think it's, for one thing, his way of, of talking about anything but this avalanche of legal peril. And it is real peril. I mean, just think of the irony of the fact that at the very moment that one of his kind of Most Toadyish supporters on Capitol Hill is suggesting installing him as speaker. A judge in New York is literally installing a gag order on his ability to say terrible things about the clerk in the court. I mean, there is a way in which it kind of bends your sense of reality to try to put these two things side by side. The reality is that today as we are talking, Donald Trump is a stronger presidential candidate than he was even a few months ago on the numbers. And there's already talk that some of the people who had turned against him are just waiting until he gets the nomination and then they will in fact give him more money to run again. I mean, I'm sort of tempted to climb under the desk here, guys, and just curl up in a ball.
- [27:51]
Susan Glaser
So Jane, one thing we haven't mentioned at all, of course in all of this is Democrats. And yet actually a lot of what we've heard this week From Republicans after McCarthy's ouster was fury at their colleagues across the aisle because Matt Gaetz could not have succeeded in this if the entire House Democratic Conference had not gone ahead and voted along with eight Republican rebels to oust McCarthy. Jane, what do you make of the role of Democrats here? They clearly decided as a group that this was, as Hakeem Jeffries put it, a Republican civil war and it was up to Republicans to deal with it. Did Democrats make the right call?
- [28:31]
Jane Mayer
It seems ridiculous to say that it's the Democrats fault and they should save a Republican speaker who's done nothing for them and basically stuck a stick in their eye and when the Republicans have the majority in the House. That said, I am seeing some sort of interesting commentary from people like Anne Applebaum saying if you look around the world, the road towards stability here and getting out of these sort of doom cycles as you've described them, is bipartisanship. I think it's. I really wouldn't lay it at the feet of the Democrats though.
- [29:07]
Evan Osnos
It's.
- [29:07]
Jane Mayer
The Republicans have been impossible to make deals with. They are radical, they are nihilists. They're not acting like people who are, you know, participating in government in good faith. There's no partner there for the Democrats right now. But you could in some better world, you can imagine there might be some sort of bipartisan way out of this right now. It just doesn't exist with these particular people.
- [29:33]
Evan Osnos
I get the sense that as high minded as it might be to say that we need to go high at this moment, I was reminded this week Mark Leibovich quoted the great Jim Carville line that he Said, when your enemy is drowning, go ahead and throw him an anvil.
- [29:50]
Susan Glaser
Well, the politics of this might even play into a theme we know that Joe Biden is gonna run on again next year. Evan. Right, which is this idea of Republicans are extremists. They can't be entrusted to run the government because they can't even run their own caucus.
- [30:07]
Evan Osnos
Exactly. I mean, I think this week is just the most eloquent demonstration of that argument. And it's part of the reason why you haven't heard one piece out of Biden. I mean, he's just. There's no reason for him to wander into this thing. Just let it play out. I mean, I think it goes back to one of the first things we talked about on here, which is that for a long time there's been this strange feeling that our politics is a land of no consequences. You can say anything. You can start an impeachment of the president on the basis of no evidence, and then somehow you imagine that if you're Kevin McCarthy, you're gonna come back and get Democrats to support you and rescue you from your own caucus. No, actually, sometimes, occasionally, very rarely, the laws of physics still prevail.
- [30:50]
Susan Glaser
Although I do think it's important to close on a note of actual consequences, because there are real consequences to this. One thing that has leapt out to me is the extent to which Ukraine aid, for example, is now entirely up in the air as a consequence of Kevin McCarthy trying and failing to placate these rebels, who also have embraced Donald Trump's skepticism about U.S. support for Ukraine. It's been a marked political shift, Jane, and now we're talking about something really consequential. In many ways, this has been the most important foreign policy initiative of Joe Biden's tenure. And now, just because of the turmoil inside the House gop, it's not even clear that the US Support for Ukraine can continue for the rest of the year.
- [31:36]
Jane Mayer
And it is one of the true, one of the only really substantive differences between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan is. Is openly opposing Ukraine aid, and Scalise is supporting it.
- [31:49]
Evan Osnos
I'll mention something. It sounds like. I know I'm self parody here, but an insight from the Chinese side of this is that months and months ago, the pla, the People's Liberation army internally, came up with an assessment of what they thought was gonna happen in the Ukraine war. And one of the key things that they predicted was they thought Republican support in the US House of Representatives was gonna dissipate enough that the US would not be able to sustain its comm. And that has been a key fact in how China has actually thought about its own strategy. And it's bizarre to think that on this one, they may have been right.
- [32:23]
Susan Glaser
Well, look, let's just say this, that Vladimir Putin is watching all of this very, very carefully. And it just reinforces, I think, something that's already been apparent, which is he has zero incentive to end this war in Ukraine until he waits and sees what the outcome of the US Election is, is next November.
- [32:42]
Jane Mayer
The only point I just was gonna make, Susan, before, was about what's happening with Trump right now. You know, yes, he's very strong if you look at political polls. I mean, but it seems to me in some ways his rhetoric is becoming increasingly desperate.
- [33:00]
Evan Osnos
Yes. For attention.
- [33:02]
Jane Mayer
And that he's screaming for attention, which I imagine is to take to distract people from looking at the trial. He's doing one thing after another in order to try to keep people from looking at what's happening inside this courtroom. And one of the things that happened for Trump this week was a blatant defeat. He withdrew a case that he had brought against Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, and it was a $500 million damages suit of some sort, and he just gave up on it and withdrew it. I mean, he is not faring well. Well right now, legally.
- [33:37]
Susan Glaser
And by the way, he withdrew it so that he would not have to give a sworn under oath deposition in the case that he himself had brought, which is, I think, classic Donald Trump. But, Jane, this is a really important point, actually. This week, the Washington Post media writer did a piece on exactly this question of how do we cover Trump's increasingly violent and extreme rhetoric, noticing that the front pages of America's newspapers were entirely almost silent when he called for all caps. Death, death for the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They asked me that question. My answer, as you guys all know, is, of course, yes, it's important to take him seriously and literally. Evan and Jane, I'm curious, what would you guys have answered to the media writer? Are the papers failing to cover the news of Trump? Because we're just overwhelmed with news of Trump.
- [34:27]
Jane Mayer
I mean, I think there's such a double standard about the way they cover Trump's utterances and Biden's utterances. If Biden says anything that's even slightly off script, everybody jumps on him and says, oh, he's demented or whatever. Trump is saying things that are would sink any normal person, and he's calling for extrajudicial killings, basically. He's talking about shooting shoplifters dead. He's talking about killing people on the border. He's talking about the death sentence for the general who was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I mean, this is crazy rhetoric and dangerous rhetoric, rhetoric. And I don't feel he's being. It's being given enough attention, really.
- [35:09]
Evan Osnos
I agree. I mean, I think in some ways the tools in our usual arsenal, you know, the edges are blunt. Now, we've tried to talk about him in every way we can. We've come with the grandest analogies and the biggest sort of stakes and everything. But the truth is the only solution is to keep doing it and to keep talking about it. And on some level, on some level, actually, I think it sinks in. I mean, you don't see it in the polls, as you said, Jane, but on some level, that's the Biden strategy is he just believes Americans fundamentally don't want that in their lives.
- [35:41]
Susan Glaser
Well, let's see if he's right. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Susan Glaser. We had production assistance today from Alex to the Dan Richards and Gianna Palmer. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. We'll be back in two weeks. Thanks for listening.
- [36:17]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
America is changing, and so is the world.
- [36:22]
Jane Mayer
But what's happening in America isn't just.
- [36:24]
Evan Osnos
A cause of global upheaval.
- [36:26]
Jane Mayer
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [36:30]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [36:32]
Jane Mayer
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [36:36]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [36:42]
Jane Mayer
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:50]
Susan Glaser
From.
- [36:50]
Jane Mayer
PRX.