125. How Trump’s Shutdown Hit Breaking Point

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Speaker 1 Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katie Kay, in Washington, D.C., and Anthony, somewhere very snazzy.

Speaker 2 I am in the Rosewood Chancery, Katie, very fancy. And I know you're going to be joining us here at the SALT conference here.
So we're super excited.

Speaker 2 Of course, we're going to have Alistair and Rory and

Speaker 2 Dominic and Tom and a handful of our Gallhanger friends, including Gary. So very excited.

Speaker 1 I'm looking forward to that, especially with a snazzy hotel.

Speaker 2 What are we talking about today?

Speaker 1 Talking of snazzy, we're going to talk about the government shutdown and the juxtaposition of Donald Trump throwing lavish parties for Halloween at Mar-a-Lago, great Gatsby style, whilst some 40 million Americans risked losing their food stamps.

Speaker 1 And then we're going to quickly also look at whether the Democrats have lost working-class voters, because I came across a very interesting study on that that I thought it was worth talking about.

Speaker 1 And it kind of gets to some of this idea of a luxury gap.

Speaker 1 And we'll come back in the second half and talk about an interview that Trump did on 60 Minutes, the famous CBS program, where he touched on a whole load of wide-ranging things, including nuclear testing, whether you might indeed invoke the Insurrection Act, and how ICE is not done yet.

Speaker 1 So we can talk about all of that.

Speaker 2 And the third term, Gaddy. He talked about the third term.

Speaker 1 And the third term, yeah. So a lot, he got to, he got to a lot in that interview.
I thought Nora O'Donnell did well.

Speaker 1 Interviewing Donald Trump is not easy because you have to decide whether you're going to play the role of fact checker for the whole interview or whether you're just going to let him talk.

Speaker 1 But I thought she did a good job.

Speaker 2 Me too. All right.
But before do all of that, Gaddy, we have an exciting announcement.

Speaker 2 I'm taking the stage in Ireland with none other than Alistair Campbell for the Rest is Politics UK edition in March of next year.

Speaker 2 We're taking over the Convention Center in Dublin on the 5th of March and the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on the 6th of March. So we're super excited about all this.

Speaker 2 We're going to be talking politics home and abroad and really getting into the secrets of Westminster, Washington, and beyond. So tickets go on sale Friday, November 7th at 9 a.m.

Speaker 2 But if you really want to make sure you don't miss out, you can get exclusive pre-sale access by signing up at the restispoliticsus.com. Pre-sale opens this Wednesday, November the 5th.

Speaker 2 So don't miss out. Head to therestispoliticsus.com, sign up, and get your tickets.

Speaker 1 How was that? Was that okay? That was good.

Speaker 1 That was a good sales job. I'll miss you.
That sounds like a fun show.

Speaker 2 I'm not as effective as you, but at least I said it with a lot of enthusiasm.

Speaker 1 You'll have lines out the door. Let's talk about the shutdown, which has now entered day 33.
That's just two days short of a record.

Speaker 2 Are they going to break the record, Caddy?

Speaker 1 I think they're going to break the record. They've got to get through these elections in Virginia and New York and New Jersey tomorrow.

Speaker 1 And I think that will give the Democrats some momentum if they win, if they do well in those elections. Donald Trump has now come back from Asia.
There's more pressure on him to get involved.

Speaker 1 And I think no one thinks this is going to end until he does decide to turn his mind to it.

Speaker 1 But what's been stunning about this shutdown so far is that both sides still feel they are the beneficiaries of it politically.

Speaker 1 And there's just a lack of urgency, particularly from the White House and the Republicans, about trying to end this shutdown, which by the way, in two days' time is going to beat the record of all shutdowns.

Speaker 1 I just haven't, usually... In a shutdown, the president does not travel abroad.
That is not the way it goes. They focus on the urgency at home.
But this one just doesn't seem to have much urgency.

Speaker 1 And as we spoke about last week, this is kind of crunch crunch moment now because people are going to be losing their paychecks. It's been a month now that they haven't been paid.

Speaker 1 That's a lot for people who are living paycheck to paycheck. And we still have the threat that some 40 million Americans are not going to be getting their food assistance.

Speaker 1 So I think the combination of the election on Tuesday and the results of that and the real pain that is going to start being felt by people could mean that we get a bit of a break in the logjam.

Speaker 1 What do you think?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think you're right. I think it's going to come down to Donald Trump.
He's going to be the one that makes this decision decision one way or the other.

Speaker 2 For me, I think it's going to harm him. I just when it starts to harm him, and it creeped into the interview a little bit about how he wants to be generous.

Speaker 2 He wants to work on health care now, he said, with the Democrats.

Speaker 2 Trump's got good political instincts. Maybe it didn't harm him up until now, but I'm just letting you know if you go over.

Speaker 2 If you go over the 35 days, he is going to be the president in charge of a party that controls controls everything, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, everything,

Speaker 2 and the government's shut down. And I think that's the gambit that the Democrats are playing.

Speaker 2 I hate to sound so cynical, Caddy, but I think they're looking at it saying, this will be great if it goes past the 35 days. Somehow, this will tar the president and Speaker Mike Johnson the most.

Speaker 2 That's what I think.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's interesting. Actually, you picked up on something there because Speaker Mike Johnson over the weekend was talking about Donald Trump as the big-hearted president.

Speaker 1 He wants everybody to get their services. He's just desperate for the government to open.
He's tried everything he can. I don't know.

Speaker 1 That felt to me like Mike Johnson having got the message from the White House that he now had to paint Donald Trump as the guy who was super generous and was working hard.

Speaker 1 When we know actually, Trump has really not been focused on this, has not done very much at all.

Speaker 1 Between the Middle East situation and then the trip to Asia, he's barely done anything to try and get this ended.

Speaker 1 But it does seem like Mike Johnson was echoing some kind of White House talking points when he suddenly said that this Trump is the big-hearted guy, because Trump does not want to be painted as the mean guy who's depriving his working-class voters.

Speaker 1 Because actually, who is the recipient of these food stamp subsidies?

Speaker 1 Most of them are in red rural areas. He paints this as hitting Democrats, which some of the shutdown has done, and he's cancelled programs to Democratic cities like the tunnel in New York.

Speaker 1 But a lot of the recipients of the food stamps come actually from states in the South and in the Midwest, which are more rural and have more Republican voters.

Speaker 1 So it also potentially is hurting his own voters, don't you think? I mean, that is where the political conundrum doesn't seem to make sense for him.

Speaker 2 So, Katie, go back for viewers and listeners and tell us what a filibuster is. Some people don't know what it is.

Speaker 2 Tell us what it is, and then tell us why this is a problem in getting the government reopened.

Speaker 1 So, the filibuster is a parliamentary mechanism in the Senate basically to get anything approved you need 60 votes there are some exceptions but let's just stick with that figure of 60 votes you need 60 votes to get anything approved and

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 1 opposing side can filibuster can stop something coming to a vote by talking for hours and hours and hours on the Senate floor if they don't have the requisite number of votes to get to 60.

Speaker 1 But what Donald Trump is saying is do away, Republicans, you've got the power, do away with the 60-vote threshold, go for a 50-vote threshold, which would mean basically anything that the Republicans wanted could get passed by just 50 votes.

Speaker 1 That would be known as called the nuclear option to do away with the 60 votes.

Speaker 1 But some Republicans, wise Republicans, remember the days when Democrats were in the White House and Democrats controlled the Senate and are pushing back and saying, hold on a second, Mr.

Speaker 1 President, if we do away with the 60-vote threshold now and go for the nuclear option, when those Democrats are back in power, guess what? They will use it against us as well.

Speaker 1 And the Senate no longer becomes a body where there is some effort to have conciliation because you have to reach out to the other side to get those 60 votes. It just becomes a purely partisan body.

Speaker 2 The system was set up to prevent a, you know, one vote better than the other. You wanted some consensus.
you wanted some compromise. So you had to reach across the aisle and pull at least 10 senators.

Speaker 2 If you had 50 seats, you had to pull at least 10 senators. In this case, the Republicans have 53 seats, Caddy, so they've got to pull seven Democrats over to reopen the government.

Speaker 2 This is super important because in 2013, Harry Reid made the decision to end the filibuster as it related to Supreme Court nominations.

Speaker 2 And so I don't know if you remember this, but McConnell said to Harry Reid, hey, man, you're pulling the nuclear option. It's going to come back to bite you later on.

Speaker 2 And Harry Reid said he didn't care. He was going to get this done

Speaker 2 where you just have to have a majority. And then what did McConnell do to the Democrats? He pumped three Supreme Court justices into the Supreme Court in the first Trump term.

Speaker 2 And now you have this sort of six to three super majority in the court. So I think it would be very, very dangerous to end the filibuster.
I think Trump knows that

Speaker 2 because once they lose power, if and when they lose power, they're going to want it.

Speaker 2 And so it's just a weird thing that's going on right now.

Speaker 1 That Trump is pushing for on Truth Social Posts.

Speaker 2 So I now believe that they're going to go to the Democrats and there's going to be some sort of compromise on health care to get the government reopened.

Speaker 2 The Democrats are going to get to the podium and say, hey, we beat these guys. We saved your health care.
That's going to be our campaign issue going into 2026.

Speaker 2 And then, oh, by the way, could you please sit, everybody, in the House of Representatives, so that we can take a look at the Epstein files?

Speaker 2 But as I have said repeatedly, those will be the heavily redacted Epstein files. But while this is all going on, let's talk about Emperor Nero Trump.

Speaker 2 What is Emperor Nero Trump doing while all this is going on and people are losing their food stamps and they're losing their, not luxuries, Caddy, but necessities for them to live?

Speaker 2 What is Donald Trump doing?

Speaker 1 My invitation got lost in the post. I don't know if you got your invitation,

Speaker 1 but over the weekend, Donald Trump held a Halloween-themed Great Gatsby party. with the slogan on the invites, a little party never killed nobody,

Speaker 1 which is a sort of odd thing. The juxtaposition, the photos are extraordinary.
Everyone dressed to the nines, partying like it's going out of fashion.

Speaker 1 I mean, I hope that this is not presaging some kind of stock market crash in the way that they had in 1929, but let's, you know, this, that was definitely the vibe of this party.

Speaker 1 So I have a slightly counterintuitive feeling about this because I was on TV this morning and there was quite a lot of sort of frothing around the mouth about, oh, you know, here is this Mar-a-Lago party and people are going to be shocked by seeing all of this bling.

Speaker 1 And there is Donald Trump partying away like it's Great Gatsby, which is a kind of particular choice that he has made, whilst 42 million Americans are about to lose their food stamps.

Speaker 1 But this sort of gets us onto this idea of working class voters, because my impression of many of Donald Trump's supporters from the working class is that they are aspirational voters.

Speaker 1 They know that Donald Trump is a billionaire. They know that he covers the White House in gold.
They know that he flies around on a private jet and lives in a you know, gilded tower in Manhattan.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't bother them because there is an aspirational quality to many working class voters, which is, well, I want to have that too.

Speaker 1 And they still believe, they know that Donald Trump even cuts taxes for the wealthy, for his wealthy friends.

Speaker 1 But they still believe that he is the guy that will look out for him because they believe he relates to them in a way that Democrats have failed to do.

Speaker 1 So I'm not sure Democrats are right to make such a big deal of this Gatsby party and think, oh, you see, people are going to be up in arms about you know, the Marie Antoinette nature of it whilst they're about to lose their food stamps.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'm wrong, but my experience of talking to working-class voters, particularly to Trump supporters, is that they're fine with him having lots of money.

Speaker 1 It really just, it doesn't bother them that he has lots of money in parties and has a massive mansion in private jets.

Speaker 1 I think the tearing down of the East Wing bothers them more than the Mar-a-Lago-Gatsby Party.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think the historical context of tearing down the East Wing sort of gets people uncomfortable. Again, I'm not trying to defend Trump.
Obviously, Harry Truman tore down the White House.

Speaker 2 You can go look at the inside of the White House. It's been totally re-gutted and reframed in 1952, and people were upset about that.
But as Truman pointed out, it was falling down.

Speaker 2 The structure was falling down. This is different because the structure was not falling down.

Speaker 2 And he could have done things to keep the East Wing there.

Speaker 1 Well, he said he was going to, right? And originally, he said, I'm not going to touch the structure.

Speaker 2 Well, that's him. He's the great liar.
So you say, oh, he's not going to do it. Then he does it.
And then he lies about it anyway. And people just walk him away.

Speaker 2 He's immunized people from what he says and his mistruths.

Speaker 2 But Katie, I hate to be a literary scold, but the great Gatsby happened on Long Island, and we were forced to read it like, I think, in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade.

Speaker 2 I had to read it every year. The party was not a good thing.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I laugh at people that want to throw Gatsby parties because Fitzgerald was trying to talk about the party and Gatsby's fraudulent life and the excesses of it is not a good thing.

Speaker 2 And I think it's just very interesting. I wonder what F.
Scott Fitzgerald would say today

Speaker 2 in the 100 years. It was published in April of 1925, 100 years ago.

Speaker 2 I wonder what he would say today that we've now taken a literary device that he was using as a negative and we've turned it into this positive celebration in the country.

Speaker 2 Just think of the change in the culture.

Speaker 1 Are you suggesting that Donald Trump, having read, of course, The Great Gatsby multiple times, has a different interpretation of the great work of literature than you do?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm pretty sure he saw the movie, though, with Robert Redford. I'm pretty sure he did.

Speaker 1 Or Leonardo.

Speaker 2 And by the way, the party in the first movie in 1974 was a happen-in-party.

Speaker 2 I probably shouldn't admit this, doesn't reflect well on me, but when my senior year in high school, I went to a party in Sands Point, which was East Egg.

Speaker 2 And I said to the person at the party, this is like a Jay Gatsby party. And the father of the high schooler that had put the party together didn't like it.
He was a World War II veteran.

Speaker 2 He had actually read Gatsby and he scolded me. I was a senior in high school.

Speaker 2 And I just think it's just amazing how far the culture has gone now where Trump's having a Gatsby party and he thinks it's cool. And other people are like, yeah, it's fine.
He's a rich guy.

Speaker 2 He's my guy. And he's rich.
And remember what he said to Hillary Clinton? I'll never forget it. He said, I'm, of course, I'm doing everything I can not to pay taxes.

Speaker 2 That's what smart people do, not pay taxes.

Speaker 2 I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is actually working with people that are paying more of a percentage of their income in taxes than Donald Trump, the real estate developer, because he's taking advantage of all these things that are in the tax code for the very wealthy.

Speaker 2 So it's an irony, Caddy, but that's the world we're living in today.

Speaker 1 This is why I wanted to talk about this because it made me think. I was listening to Ezra Klein's interview with Jared Abbott, who is from the Center for Working Class Politics.

Speaker 1 And he is a think tank, and Jared has done some very interesting work on working-class voters and what they want and what they don't want.

Speaker 1 And a lot of his work focuses on the relationship between working-class voters and a democratic party that now feels out of touch with them, not necessarily on policy, but on attitude and

Speaker 1 way of life and cultural issues.

Speaker 1 And Jared makes the point that the working class, actually, in America, has become more progressive over the last 20 years on many things, but the middle class has gone much further to the left, much faster than working class voters and has kind of left them behind.

Speaker 1 And it's the middle class and upper middle class. to be totally classist about America, which is now really the Democratic class.

Speaker 1 And working class Americans feel looked down on by Democrats, and they don't feel looked down on by Donald Trump. However wealthy he is, however much money he is, they don't feel sneered at.

Speaker 1 I mean, you could argue that Donald Trump's policies aren't actually doing much for the working class, but they feel that the Republican Party or the Republican leadership at least is not sneering at them.

Speaker 1 And I thought it was such a smart piece of analysis of how working class voters feel. It reminded me, I did an interview in 2008.
Do you remember John Edwards, Anthony? Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 Who ran for president back in 2008? He was part of that incredible primary with Barack Obama.

Speaker 2 Had like a pro Fumo-like sex scandal, right?

Speaker 1 He had a profumo sex scandal.

Speaker 2 It was a little worse than profumo because he had the baby with the liaison.

Speaker 1 And his wife had cancer. I mean, the whole thing was very messy.
But he had very good hair. He had hair a bit like Mr.
Scaramucci's hair, very good hair.

Speaker 2 No, no, don't compare. Look, look, I'm going to let you.
You can do a lot of different things to me. Don't compare me to John Edwards, okay?

Speaker 1 I'm comparing my hair. He had very good hair.
Anyway, John Edwards was very well.

Speaker 2 That's when I was getting my ego back intact after all the blasting. I'm with stupid.
Now I'm being compared to John Edwards. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Anyway, he had very good hair. And a story broke about how he spent $400 on a haircut while he was sitting on his...
plane on the tarmac of some campaign stop.

Speaker 1 And I was outside a steel mill in Ohio doing my kind of actual genuine reporter thing back in the day.

Speaker 1 And I interviewed this guy who worked for the union who was was campaigning for John Edwards in the primaries. And the story had just broke.

Speaker 1 And I said, what do you think about this story about John Edwards spending $400 on a haircut?

Speaker 1 And the union guy said to me, good on him, because we would all like to be able to spend $400 on a haircut on our private plane. I have no problem with that.
That is what I aspire to be able to do.

Speaker 1 And I think that's sometimes Democrats get that wrong.

Speaker 1 They assume that working class voters are going to look at that Mar-a-Lago party or the, you know, gilded oval office or the new Lincoln bedroom and say, oh, why is he spending all of that money while we are not getting our food stamps?

Speaker 1 But I think that might be a more of a European mentality to how things work here, but I don't think it's how that works here.

Speaker 2 I think so. I mean, Bono said it better than me.
He said that when he was living in Ireland and he drove by a house.

Speaker 1 I think Bono probably says things better than both of us most of the time. Yeah, a lot better.

Speaker 2 He could sing a lot better. But he said, you know, in America, you drive by the big house, you're like, yeah, I'm going to someday live in that house.

Speaker 2 In Ireland, when he was growing up as a kid, you drive by the house. Well, Ireland's doing very well now economically.
So you want to burn the house down. So

Speaker 2 there's some resentment towards the rich, and there's some aspiration towards them. But I'm going to test something on you, Caddy, that I think about a lot.
I think Barack Obama caused this.

Speaker 2 And I know we're going to talk about Barack Obama. He did a good job campaigning over the weekend.

Speaker 1 He had Democrats swooning again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm going to stipulate that Barack Obama,

Speaker 2 he moved the party. Bill Clinton was focused on those unions and those blue-collar people and those white working class rural people.

Speaker 2 And believe it or not, his wife, because they were pretty good political partners, was also trying to go after those people. She was competing with Bernie Sanders to go after those people.

Speaker 2 But when Barack Obama came in, he did make this a woke culture war. He came in.
This is controversial for me to say this, but he came in. He was upset.
He had reasons to be upset.

Speaker 2 Remember, I was in law school with him. I very, very vividly remember many of the African Americans at Harvard Law School complaining that they were passed up by white cab drivers in Cambridge.

Speaker 2 And of course, that famously came home to Roost during the first term of Obama. And he was like, okay, I want to end this.
I want to even the playing field. And again, I'm not criticizing him.

Speaker 2 I'm just pointing out what Van Jones, one of his former colleagues in the White House, now a CNN

Speaker 2 commentator, said. He said, well, Donald Trump is a white lash.

Speaker 2 President Obama moved the culture. He was the George Washington of the woke movement.

Speaker 2 And as the Democratic Party became more woke and it became more

Speaker 2 locked into this microanalysis of the verbiage and all of this stuff that goes on now. It's got people very upset, Caddy.
And I think it started with him. You can push back and tell me if it didn't.

Speaker 2 I agree.

Speaker 1 I think working class voters really don't like it. And that's what they showed us in the election of 2024.

Speaker 1 And that's what the work of Jared Abbott is also showing, that they don't like the linguistic, the kind of language restrictions.

Speaker 1 And they also don't believe Democrats when they say we're going to have lots of spending programs that's going to make your life better.

Speaker 1 But I actually don't think Barack Obama himself is particularly woke. I think he was actually much more of a centrist politician.

Speaker 1 What he did do that I think opened him up to criticism from conservatives is he used the organs of government, a bit like we're seeing now, but on a lesser scale.

Speaker 1 He used the IRS to target right-leaning groups

Speaker 1 that he didn't like, kind of Tea Party type groups, to investigate them.

Speaker 1 So there was an element of him doing exactly what Democrats are now criticizing the Trump administration for doing, but he did it on a lesser scale.

Speaker 2 This is why this is a fun podcast for me. I see it differently.

Speaker 2 I see him as a woke-a-joke sort of a guy. I see his mother-in-law, who is now deceased, Michelle Obama's mom, who lived with the Obamas in the White House,

Speaker 2 helping them to raise their two daughters, as very unwoke. She told the president, this has gone too far.

Speaker 2 And the president, in his post-presidency, during the first Trump term, went out to the microphone and said, we've all become on the left skulls. Yes.
You can go back and find that interview.

Speaker 1 He said it a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 2 He credited his mother-in-law going to him and saying, hey, you better wake up.

Speaker 2 The older people in the country, black and white, people don't like it because they're being accused of something that they themselves don't feel that they actually are.

Speaker 2 And he caused it.

Speaker 1 I think it happened. I mean, I think you can see how Obama represented some of that.

Speaker 1 I don't remember, apart from his comment during the campaign about people clinging to their guns and religion, which is a little bit in the bracket of Hillary Clinton's basket of deplorables comment.

Speaker 1 I think that was a mistake of a comment that he made.

Speaker 2 But actually the big

Speaker 1 push to more woke language and censoring of language, in my experience, came after Me Too and then Black Lives Matter.

Speaker 1 That's when I saw my kids and the whole cancel culture movement came around Black Lives Matter. And I think that, and that was post-Obama.

Speaker 1 Now, you could say, well, Obama set the stage for that, but I don't think he can be held responsible for what happened after he left office.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I think he set the stage. And then what happens in these cultural movements is you get the rolling ball of momentum.

Speaker 2 And in his last term, he started pushing this stuff. And you just mentioned weaponizing the IRS.
You know, you know that that's happened. The Democrats have weaponized the Department of Justice.

Speaker 2 Look what they did to Trump. He's now doing it back to them.

Speaker 2 It's a tit for tat. And listen, in an age of social media, you know and I know that it can be a drop.
in the pond and it turns out to be a tidal wave, okay, because of what can happen in social media.

Speaker 2 So I'm just making the point that if the Democrats want to get this back, the numbers don't don't look great for them right now, but if they want to get this back, they can get it back, Addie.

Speaker 2 But they've got to face the music, and

Speaker 2 they've got to admit the mistakes that they've made and go into these rural areas.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 let's see what happens in the elections tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Which groups turn out, which groups don't turn out, which areas of Virginia and New Jersey people turn out in, and how well Democrats, the two Democratic candidates have done in reaching out to people who are not in the urban centers in both of those states?

Speaker 1 How well have they done?

Speaker 2 Okay, let's have some fun. Let's have a prediction here.
Okay. Mayor's race.
Who's winning the mayor's race in New York?

Speaker 1 If I said Andrew Cuomo, I would have to be fired from the show, but you're a friend and supporter of his, so maybe you should say that.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with the shocking choice of Zoran Mamdani winning in New York.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 I think he's... He's got it.

Speaker 2 I think he's going to win.

Speaker 2 I mean, I would love there to be an upset there, but I think he's going to win. Okay.
What about the New Jersey governor's race?

Speaker 1 New Jersey governor's race is the most interesting of them.

Speaker 1 And if I was going to give it to a Republican, I would probably give it to a Republican in New Jersey. But I'm probably going to go with Mikey Sherrill there, too.

Speaker 2 Okay, so I think she still has momentum. She's a very good campaigner.
So I'm in agreement with you there. And what about the Virginia governor's race?

Speaker 1 I think that's Spambergers. That's the Democrats as well.

Speaker 2 I mean, too big of a lead there.

Speaker 1 If they get, you know, three for three in these three big races, that's going to give them a certain amount of confidence and momentum.

Speaker 1 It'll be just really interesting to break down who votes and how many people Donald Trump loses from Hispanic voters and from young voters because they were so critical to him.

Speaker 1 And in the end, Democrats only need, you know, they only need to win. They don't need to win massive landslides and they don't need a candidate they fall massively in love with.

Speaker 1 Even though they did fall back in love with Barack Obama this weekend, they just need candidates that can win.

Speaker 1 And if Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger pull it off, that's going to be an argument for having those more centrist candidates going forwards.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that would be great. I mean, you're going to get two signals to the center

Speaker 2 and one signal to the left. We'll have to see how that manifests in 2026 and then 28.

Speaker 1 We're going to take a quick break and come back. Donald Trump did a wide-ranging interview with my friend Nora O'Donnell on 60 Minutes and we'll look at the highlights.

Speaker 5 Hello, I'm David Ullashoga.

Speaker 1 And I'm Sarah Churchwell.

Speaker 5 This week on Journey Through Time, we are exploring the story of the gunpowder plot of 1605.

Speaker 5 The story of how a small group of Catholics engaged in what would have been the most devastating terrorist attack in all of British history.

Speaker 1 The plan was ruthless, blow up Parliament, King James I, and most of his family, all in a single blow.

Speaker 5 The series will tell the story of treason and traitors, of a group of men led by the charismatic Robert Catesby, who believed that the only option left to them to win their rights as Catholics was the violent destruction.

Speaker 2 of the Stuart state.

Speaker 1 We look at the story of Guy Fox, the nation's most famous traitor, from his recruitment to becoming the plot's fall guy and ultimately being tortured and killed.

Speaker 5 Finally, we find out why this plot is still remembered now, 400 years later. Listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 5 And as a special treat for listeners, we've got an extract from that series at the end of this episode.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back to the Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

Speaker 1 I'm me, Katie Kaye.

Speaker 2 So, Katy, it's 60 Minutes, which still gets about 10 million viewers in the United States. Of course, CBS now owned by Larry Ellison and his son, David Ellison.

Speaker 2 They brought in Barry Weiss. They're trying to make the news division there more centrist, if you will.

Speaker 2 There's

Speaker 2 long-dated reports that CBS has had a little bit of a liberal bias. There's best-selling books describing that.
But they want to move into the center.

Speaker 2 They settle a case with Donald Trump and they bring him on the air. And your friend Nora O'Donnell interviews him.
And I watched the whole interview.

Speaker 2 The Republicans, interestingly enough, say that he was interrupted too many times. I didn't see it that way.
She was trying to keep him on track.

Speaker 2 If you don't interrupt him, he'll take a breath. He breathes through his ears, and he'll go for a 30-minute run-on sentence, and it'll be a word salad like word salads you've never seen before.

Speaker 2 So what are your thoughts on the interview?

Speaker 2 My thoughts are that he came out of it pretty well. She came out of it pretty well.
Those are generally my thoughts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought it was a fair interview. I thought, you know, she did the questions and the follow-ups.

Speaker 1 And he's a very, very difficult person to interview for the reasons you give, partly because he does say things that aren't true or that are inaccurate.

Speaker 1 And you have to kind of then decide whether you're going to counter that every time. And he does give incredibly long, I mean, listen to his speeches, right?

Speaker 1 He can talk for, he can talk for over an hour without drawing breath. So if you want to get to multiple topics, then

Speaker 1 you have to make sure that you kind of steer the conversation and keep it on track. And that does mean doing some interrupting.
I thought a couple of things were,

Speaker 1 I mean, there was quite a lot of news in it because he had given just before he did the interview, he'd put out that Truth Social post about how America is going to

Speaker 1 start

Speaker 1 nuclear testing because other countries are doing nuclear testing. Nora O'Donnell put it to him that the only other country that's been doing nuclear testing is North Korea.

Speaker 1 He insisted that Russia and China are testing, but they don't talk about it.

Speaker 1 That seems to suggest that he's talking about some intel maybe that the Americans have or that he is who knows whether that's true or not.

Speaker 1 But anyway, that was his rationale for starting nuclear testings.

Speaker 1 I mean, he said that they're not going to be nuclear explosions, which is what his energy secretary said over the course of the weekend on television, but that they would still be nuclear tests.

Speaker 1 I didn't come away very clear on when and how America is going to do this, did you?

Speaker 2 I was encouraged. So I don't know.
Maybe I'm overreading Trump.

Speaker 2 I was encouraged by that i think he's saying he's going to do the testing i don't think he really wants to do the testing uh i've you know i've talked to trump about this years ago reports obviously uh our producers put some stuff together from 1985 where we talked about denuclearization uh in way back in 2016 he was talking about that as well i think push comes to shut up trump does not want to do the testing so uh and i hope he doesn't frankly because of all the environmental impacts and all the other harmful things that happen when you do the testing.

Speaker 2 And again, we're 60 years removed from the nuclear test ban treaty that Kennedy and Khrushchev signed way back in July of 1963. But

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 liked the interview for three reasons. I disliked it for one.
So the three quick reasons. Number one, he stayed with the strategic ambiguity related to Taiwan.
I did like that.

Speaker 2 There was very big risk, Caddy, he could have gone into the tripolarization of the world world and let the Chinese have Taiwan. He did not do that in the interview.
I did like that.

Speaker 2 I think he's also been signaled by people like Besant, we need those chips and you can't let the Taiwan island get taken over by the Chinese.

Speaker 2 The second thing that he said that I liked was on the testing we just went into. And then the third thing that he said that I also like was about the third term.

Speaker 2 He basically said that he's not running for a third term. It was pretty clear.

Speaker 1 You mean Steve Bannon is basically just trying to get headlines.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and he's pissed at Bannon because you know this and I know this and I've talked to people that are very close to Trump over the weekend that say that he is really pissed at Bannon.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want Bannon talking for him and that some of these headline grabbers and some of these podcasters, et cetera, are using him as a device to get fame and notoriety for themselves.

Speaker 2 He really does not like that.

Speaker 1 And he does not like people making money out of his name.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so he's pissed at Bannon. And so, you know, I like that because I'm also pissed at Bannon.
I'll be forever pissed at Bannon. So I like the fact that he's pissed at Bannon.

Speaker 2 But the thing I didn't like is to give up on

Speaker 2 CBS.

Speaker 2 I thought that they were,

Speaker 2 I don't know, I feel like they caved here.

Speaker 2 They could have, you know, Nora O'Donnell definitely had instructions to play Trump a certain way that Dan Rather wouldn't have,

Speaker 2 Maurice Schaefer wouldn't have had. You pick some of the old legends, Mike Wallace.
There's no way Mike Wallace, Chris Wallace's dad, this super tough questioner,

Speaker 2 would have let Trump off the hook in so many ways that Nora O'Donnell did.

Speaker 2 And so to me, I like three things, but the issue now is Trump is bullying the press and it's working, Caddy, and that's something I don't like.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, CBS is basically, you know,

Speaker 1 in getting Barry Weiss in the conservative journalist commentator, they've sent a very clear signal.

Speaker 1 I mean, I thought Nora didn't do a bad job because actually she kind of let sometimes with Trump, it's you can ask him questions in a way that doesn't sound confrontational and you'll get the answer that tells you how he's thinking.

Speaker 1 And the two things that I thought were difficult about the interview that I think could even cause him problems was one, where he said that he could, if he wanted to, use the Insurrection Act.

Speaker 1 And then he said the Insurrection Act had been used routinely by presidents, which it hasn't.

Speaker 1 He said that if he needed to, it would mean that he could bring in the army, the Marines. I could bring in whoever I want, but I haven't chosen to use it.
I hope you give me credit for that.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure why we should give him credit for that, because actually most presidents don't use the Insurrection Act.

Speaker 1 George W. Bush did, I think, after Katrina.
And

Speaker 1 otherwise, you have to go back decades.

Speaker 2 He did it for humanitarian reasons. He was trying to get the aid in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 but it's certainly not used routinely. And I thought, but I thought, in a way, all you have to do, Trump is so transparent in a way, you could tell what he's thinking.

Speaker 1 He's weighing, he's trying to say every other president in history has done it. So if I need to, I will.

Speaker 1 And he's been saying this a lot recently, that he's going to bring in the Army and the Marines and he can bring them into American cities.

Speaker 1 But the other thing I didn't like was when she asked him about ICE. And he said, because we spoke about this on the program last week, and he actually said he was fine with the tactics of ICE so far.

Speaker 1 And he thinks they haven't gone far enough.

Speaker 2 So I caught that. I was just going to bring that up to you.
He's got to say that because

Speaker 2 he can't say to Nora O'Donnell, I don't like it. He's telling people privately he doesn't like it.
He's also telling people privately, what the hell are you doing with the healthcare?

Speaker 2 You know, that's popping up everywhere now. He doesn't want to be tarred and feathered with the elimination of all these health care services and all the snap money.
He just doesn't want it.

Speaker 2 You know, he knows it's bad for him politically. He wants to see who he can blame it on.
You know, he's hoping it'll be Schumer, not Johnson, but he doesn't care. It's not going to be him.

Speaker 2 But he's sitting there. What is he going to say? I don't like it.
He can't say that. He's got to say that he likes it.
But quietly, he is telling people he does not like it, Caddy, because,

Speaker 2 again,

Speaker 2 the imagery is very bad for the president, and he is an image-related guy.

Speaker 2 Very bad for the president.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's why I think Nora did a good job in this instance, because she references an incident where an ICE agent tackles a crying woman, throws her to the ground outside the halls of an immigration courthouse in front of her two young children.

Speaker 1 And then she says to him, are you okay with that? And he says, yeah, because you have to get the people out. Many of them are murderers.
And I think she has him now on tape.

Speaker 1 Whatever he's saying in private, he is now on tape saying he's okay with that kind of behavior. And that is potentially damaging to him in the long run, I think.

Speaker 2 It's going to hurt him, Caddy. It's going to hurt him.
I'm going to be talking about it in three or six months when they're running tape of this. You're going to be going into the midterms.

Speaker 2 And that soundbite where he said they haven't gone far enough is going to hurt him.

Speaker 2 He's going to be pissed about it. Trust me.
It's bad, Caddy. You can't celebrate knocking moms to the ground and zip-tying them with plastic cords.
You just can't. It's just bad.

Speaker 2 And it will come back to haunt him. And it will come back to haunt the Republican Party because, you know, yes, there's a group of callous MAGA people.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, let's, you know, round up everybody and throw him in jail and kick them out of the country. Sure, there's that.

Speaker 2 But there's a lot of other people that are looking around saying, what the hell are you guys doing? It doesn't make any of us look good. Moreover, you're hurting my neighborhood.

Speaker 2 You're hurting my small town. You're hurting my city.

Speaker 2 And by the way, we need these people. We need these people.
We have labor shortages in the areas where these people are willing to work.

Speaker 2 And I just, again, 15 short years ago, we were talking about an immigration compromise with the Democrats. And now we have this ideological separation that is absurd.

Speaker 2 And I think it's hurting the country. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the biggest group that I'm going to be watching tomorrow night in the elections is how Hispanic voters vote, how many turnout and how many have changed their vote from Republican to Democrat because of what kind of scenes that we're seeing on television.

Speaker 1 We are going to leave it there and we'll be back later this week after people have voted and we'll have a wrap-up of those election results and see how our predictions perform.

Speaker 1 Thanks so much for watching guys.

Speaker 2 See you later in the week.

Speaker 5 Hi there, it's David O'Dashoga from Journey Through Time and here's that extract from our gunpowder plot series that I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 5 The person who's not rejoicing is Guy Fawkes in the tower.

Speaker 2 King James himself came to the tower to question Fawkes.

Speaker 5 That's quite an astonishing fact that Fawkes and the king looked into each other's eyes at that moment.

Speaker 1 And of course interrogations at this time, I mean when we say interrogations as if they're just being questioned, but interrogations are brutal, violent

Speaker 1 events.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and it's going to get much, much more violent. Fawkes stands up to the king in a way that actually even impresses the king.
He's open that they plan to blow up parliament.

Speaker 5 He said that the aim had been to blow King James and the other Scots back to their Scottish mountains. He says that to the king.

Speaker 1 It takes guts, but it's also not the most diplomatic thing to say to the person you've just tried to murder who and your fate is in his hands. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I think Fawkes knows what's going to happen.

Speaker 5 I mean, the king was impressed by his obstinacy, that he would not reveal the names of his co-conspirators, that he was willing to insult the king to his face.

Speaker 5 And you have to say about Guy Fawkes, a man who'd been a soldier for 10 years, my God, he had guts. I mean, he is a bad man.
He is a religious fanatic.

Speaker 5 He's not somebody I admire, but my God, he was brave. You know, you can be brave and wrong.

Speaker 5 You can be brave and involved in things that are evil at the same time. And he was all of those things.
But this willingness to stand up to the king,

Speaker 5 this is before the torture.

Speaker 1 If you want to hear more about gunpowder, treason, and plot, listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.