| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
Fannie And Freddie Update
00:02:11
|
||
| Where homes go to die on corporate balance sheets. | ||
| They should be someplace where people and God and nature intended for people to live in homes, not corporations. | ||
| So we finally have a president that's going to get something done. | ||
| And President Trump is laser focused on it. | ||
| I'm very confident that he'll take executive action and then follow it up with legislative action. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Should we expect that order by the end of the month? | |
| And are there any details to be? | ||
| I defer to you on the president on when he's going to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, is there a role for your agency in fixing the problem with rebuilding LA and those neighborhoods wiped out by the fires? | |
| We're looking at a lot of different options. | ||
| You know, Fannie and Freddie have been two neglected assets for so long. | ||
| And it's hard to believe because Fannie and Freddie have $9 trillion in assets. | ||
| Can you believe that? | ||
| And until we came on the spot, some people didn't even know these companies existed. | ||
| They just thought that these were, you know, crappy companies from the bankruptcy. | ||
| President Trump has totally rectified the Fannie and Freddie situation. | ||
| He's taken them. | ||
| They wanted to sell, they tried to get President Trump to sell the companies, if you can believe it, for $100 billion. | ||
| We just did a $200 billion, or we're in the process of doing a $200 billion mortgage bond buyback. | ||
| So my whole point is that we are looking at using Fannie and Freddie in a way to benefit the American people we never have, including but not limited to what's going on in California. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Stay tuned. | ||
| It could be pretty interesting. | ||
| You know, we do a lot of loans in California. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Think there's any fraud there? | |
| Stay tuned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Anything else to do? | ||
| Thank you, guys. | ||
| Thanks, guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll see you later for that. | |
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and joining me now, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree to remember that. | ||
|
White House Information Exchange
00:15:56
|
||
| Kate Bettingfield, former White House Communications Director during the Biden administration, and Scott Jennings, former special assistant to President George W. Bush. | ||
| He's also the author of the new book, A Revolution of Common Sense: How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization. | ||
| Thank you both so much for joining me. | ||
| We have two experts on the White House at a time when, of course, that's all anyone is talking about here in Washington and beyond. | ||
| I want to have you both peel back the curtain for me a little bit about what it is like, especially in a White House that is taking so much action all over the world. | ||
| In those moments when you both had to be really at the center of global events in a serious way like this, what are some things that people might not know about sort of how things work, what the relationships are like that, you know, the public doesn't really get to see, Scott? | ||
| Well, first of all, thank you for having me and Kate. | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| You all are two of my favorites, so I'll have no trouble at all having a simple conversation with you two today. | ||
| You know, the White House is an interesting place, as Kate knows, because there are people that you know about and they're front and center people, the president, his chief of staff, some of the political advisors that you see all the time. | ||
| But then there are also a lot of people behind the scenes. | ||
| I mean, it is, after all, a military base. | ||
| You've got military people, you've got security people, and all kinds of other folks that are dealing with some of these global affairs issues. | ||
| They're not on TV all the time dealing with the political hot topics, but they are behind the scenes communicating with the State Department and the Pentagon, communicating with foreign governments and advising the president and giving the president and his top advisors information about things that are unfolding around the globe. | ||
| So it's a beehive of activity, but a lot of it is done by people that, you know, you may never hear their name, but they have vital positions in our government and they're involved in the information exchange that's going on between our commander-in-chief and other countries like what we see going on in Venezuela right now, what we see happening in the Middle East, the negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| They're dealing with a lot of hotspots. | ||
| And so there's a lot of folks with a lot of experience in there who are doing good work for the American people. | ||
| And a lot of times it's done in anonymity. | ||
| Yeah, and Kate, you know, you were a vital person, but your name certainly was the one that was known. | ||
| You were very forward-facing. | ||
| What surprised you about your job? | ||
| I think one of the things that's most challenging about sitting in that seat and having a forward-facing role, a public-facing role, kind of piggybacks off what Scott was just saying, there is so much information moving so quickly and so many people who own different pieces of expertise who are responsible for carrying certain pieces of the puzzle to the president and the senior team. | ||
| And so if your job, if at least part of your job, as was in my case, if part of your job is to be forward-facing, to bring information to the public, staying on top of how quickly all that information is moving is incredibly challenging. | ||
| And it requires building trusting relationships with a lot of people across the board. | ||
| And I think that's one of the pieces of working at the White House that maybe the public doesn't always get to see is the intensity and the degree to which people rely on each other. | ||
| Because you do truly feel like, especially when you are, you know, when things are going poorly and media coverage is critical, you do truly feel like you are under siege, under assault. | ||
| Certainly not, you know, your life is not in jeopardy the way, for example, our military are putting their lives in jeopardy. | ||
| But you do feel this intense onslaught. | ||
| And you're working really closely with a lot of people that you have to trust and you build those trusting relationships. | ||
| And that's really part of how it all functions effectively. | ||
| Yeah, the folks that I know that have worked in the White House, there's often sort of the version of you before the White House and the version of you after the White House. | ||
| Very much so. | ||
| I'm curious how you both changed after your time in that legendary building. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Scott? | |
| Well, for me, yeah, for me, honestly, seeing up close the volume of information that a president has to take in on a daily basis. | ||
| You know, when I work for President Bush, I was in the Oval Office fairly frequently, and I was in there for very specific reasons. | ||
| But, you know, when you're in there and you see the people who are going or the next people who are coming in, just the deluge of information that they're processing on a range of topics on a daily basis, it is an extraordinarily active job. | ||
| And I've been in the Oval Office some with Donald Trump as I wrote my book this past year called A Revolution of Common Sense. | ||
| And I personally witnessed this with Trump as well. | ||
| He often has a good chunk of the cabinet, a lot of his advisors streaming in and out of the Oval Office, you know, really throughout the day. | ||
| The Oval Office, for Trump at least, right there behind the resolute desk, that is the nerve center of our government. | ||
| And so when you're part of that, when you're part of those conversations and you witness one person that the American people has entrusted with this awesome power and this awesome responsibility, you understand the stress and the anxiety that comes with the job. | ||
| It not only changes the staff that works there, but it changes the president because the amount of information that you get, the things that you know that no one else can know, I mean, all this stuff is floating around. | ||
| And the decisions that you're making and the decisions that you're part of are life and death decisions. | ||
| They do move markets. | ||
| They make huge financial impacts around the world and for average everyday working Americans alike. | ||
| And so the enormity of the job does change you. | ||
| You feel that weight on your shoulders every single day you walk in that building. | ||
| I'll just finish with this. | ||
| When I was sworn in by Andy Card, who was my first chief of staff, he said, the minute that you walk in here and you don't feel a sense of awe and a sense of awesome wonder, that's the day you should resign because you should feel that sense of responsibility every single day you walk through these doors. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I feel that way just walking into the briefing room, a place you're very familiar with. | ||
| What was the difference between Kate before the White House and Kate after the White House? | ||
| Well, if you ask my friends and family, they would probably say Kate after the White House was a more psychotic version of Kate than Kate pre-White House. | ||
| But I think it's the baseline, first of all, your baseline for an adrenaline spike goes way up. | ||
| You start working in the White House, taking in all of this information, as Scott noted, taking in information that you often cannot share except with a very limited number of people that you're working with. | ||
| And you're trying to work through what is the right next step, what will be the consequences if we make this decision. | ||
| So you're working through these incredibly hefty decisions, which sometimes do have life and death consequences. | ||
| And so over time, as you're working there, I found that my baseline for an adrenaline spike went up and up and up. | ||
| I was able to tolerate more and more kind of intense situations because you find yourself having to navigate them. | ||
| So I would say, Kate, after the White House, when I left, so I left the Biden White House in March of 2023. | ||
| And I would say it took the entirety of 2023 into the spring of 2024 before I started to sort of come back down and feel like myself again. | ||
| When you walk out of that building and suddenly you don't have your secure devices anymore, you feel like it's almost like phantom limb syndrome. | ||
| You're going, where's my phone? | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| And so the loss of that information flow is challenging, but the loss of responsibility of having to deal with that information flow can also be very, very welcome when you walk out of that building after you've been under the state. | ||
| And your fight or flight is like up here. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Well, the White House right now is, I think, dealing with a lot of adrenaline given all of the different issues at hand right now. | ||
| I want to talk about the prominent topic of Washington and the world really right now, which is Venezuela. | ||
| As everyone at this point probably knows, that President Nicolas Maduro was seized after months of tensions with the Trump administration. | ||
| He and his wife have pled not guilty to narco-terrorism, cocaine importation, and weapons charges. | ||
| You both worked in the White House. | ||
| You have seen these sorts of moments play out. | ||
| How hard, first of all, is it to keep something like this under wraps, Kate? | ||
| Extremely, extremely challenging, although I will say it is a testament to the military personnel, the intelligence community, the White House staff, the career staff, and political staff who are involved in all of the planning. | ||
| You know, I can speak to actually just before I left the White House, Biden made his covert trip to Ukraine for the anniversary of the invasion, and very, very, very few people knew that he was going to make that trip. | ||
| And so all of the necessary logistics and planning that go into any time a president moves, let alone even getting to a military operation like the one we witnessed in Venezuela, the amount of planning and logistics that goes into that is massive. | ||
| But when you're doing it in a covert way, many of the people who would normally be involved in helping you plan aren't. | ||
| And those resources are not there. | ||
| And so for the team who's working on it, it becomes trying to execute on something without a lot of the resources that you would otherwise have. | ||
| So it is challenging to keep it a secret, but it is a testament to the people who are involved that these things remain secret. | ||
| And obviously, we'll see what the eventual political fallout looks like, both domestically and in Venezuela. | ||
| But certainly the execution of that mission, incredibly, incredibly impressive. | ||
| Yeah, Scott, I think there's been debates about the actual execution of the mission, but much more so about the aftermath here. | ||
| And I'm curious to get your take on the messaging from the administration. | ||
| One big question that a lot of people are asking me, I'm talking even lawmakers and staff, is what is going on? | ||
| Who is actually running the country? | ||
| The president has been saying one thing. | ||
| Some of his administration officials have been saying something else. | ||
| I want you to take a listen to President Trump and then UN Ambassador Tim Waltz. | ||
| We're dealing with the people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're dealing with the people that just got sworn in. | |
| And don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What does that mean? | |
| We're in charge. | ||
| There is no war against Venezuela or its people. | ||
| We are not occupying a country. | ||
| This was a law enforcement operation. | ||
| That was Mike Waltz, of course. | ||
| We'll talk about Tim Walz in a little bit. | ||
| Scott, based on your time working in the White House, how feasible is an arrangement like what the president is describing? | ||
| And can you sort of assess the messaging here and what the White House is trying to do? | ||
| Well, I think this is how the president speaks. | ||
| I mean, he often puts things in sort of very lay rhetorical terms. | ||
| You know, we're running Venezuela. | ||
| I think what he means is, and what I've heard from other administration officials, is that we have a fair amount of influence and leverage over Venezuela right now. | ||
| I mean, we took out Maduro and the law enforcement operation, and we've left the rest of the government in place, including the vice president, who's been sworn in as the acting president. | ||
| And effectively, what the president has said is she's going to have to listen to us or she's going to face consequences even worse than Maduro. | ||
| So does that mean that we have American bureaucrats running around office buildings running their government? | ||
| No, but it does mean we have a massive amount of influence over Venezuela right now. | ||
| We have leverage over them because of the oil situation. | ||
| And obviously, Marco Rubio and the national security team, I would assume, are in daily contact with the remaining Venezuelan government to ensure that they're doing the things with us that we want them to do. | ||
| And if they get off the rails, well, they've seen what we can do to Maduro. | ||
| So when I hear the president say we're running Venezuela, what I hear him saying is we're improving Venezuela. | ||
| We're encouraging Venezuela to be an improving commodity in the Western hemisphere. | ||
| I ultimately believe they're going to have to have elections in Venezuela at some point and give the Venezuelan people a chance to elect a government that's not illegitimate because we never recognize Maduro or his regime as a legitimate governing part of Venezuela anyway. | ||
| But hopefully that'll come at a point when the Venezuelan people and the infrastructure there can handle it. | ||
| Give a timeline for that. | ||
| I did, Scott, I asked Caroline Levitt at a press briefing this week whether there was a timeline for elections, if the president would commit to making that happen in the next 12 months or so. | ||
| And she said there is no timeline. | ||
| And of course, the president has said it's too soon. | ||
| Should they give a more specific, clear plan for that? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I wouldn't put a date on it because you don't know how the Venezuelans are going to act. | ||
| I mean, these people that we've left in charge, I mean, they may turn out to disappoint us or do things that we don't want them to do. | ||
| That could lead to, you know, an evolving situation, or they may do what we want them to do. | ||
| I think we're still in the early stages. | ||
| I don't think we trust these people because, I mean, some people say the vice president is worse than Maduro when it comes to the drug cartels and stuff and the ruthlessness. | ||
| But I think it's too soon to tell how it's all going to shake out. | ||
| I think right now, as long as we say we have a commitment to elections in the future, when Venezuela is capable of handling it, and frankly, when they're, you know, sort of aligned with American interests, that's good enough for me. | ||
| And I think it'll be good enough for the American people. | ||
| Now, if this goes on two, three, four, five years, we'll have a problem. | ||
| But, you know, we're just in a few days since we did our operation. | ||
| So I think a timeline right now would be premature. | ||
| Kate, where are Democrats on this? | ||
| And how should they approach the messaging here? | ||
| I mean, there's a headline from Punch Bowl that says Democrats the splinter on how to confront Trump over Venezuela. | ||
| They've been critical of Maduro, but they've also been critical of this operation. | ||
| Some of them think that they shouldn't be so critical. | ||
| How do they walk this line? | ||
| I think the most effective argument for Democrats to be making on this is to be arguing that Trump has taken his eye off the ball on bringing prices down for people at home, that he's taken his eye off the economy domestically. | ||
| You know, for most Americans, debates about whether or not we should have gone into Venezuela are not about these competing factions in terms of foreign policy worldview. | ||
| It's not, most Americans aren't thinking like, I'm an anti-interventionist, like, well, you know, no, I'm a neoconservative. | ||
| They aren't, most people are not thinking about these things in the same terms that are being discussed in Washington. | ||
| So not to interrupt you, but I just think, you know, for Democrats, there are a lot of important lines of questioning here, including obviously the legality of whether the president's actions were constitutional or not. | ||
| And I think it's important to pursue that line of questioning. | ||
| But as a political matter, as a messaging matter, I think the most effective place for Democrats to be is to really be driving this sense that we see, frankly, show up in all of the public polling that people feel like Trump is too focused on foreign affairs, is too focused on his own, the enrichment of himself and his family, and isn't really thinking about the economy and isn't delivering on the kinds of promises that he made on the campaign trail. | ||
| That, to me, feels like the most effective political argument for Democrats to be doing. | ||
| That's a pretty clean message you gave just now. | ||
| Do you think that Democratic leaders are connecting those dots well enough? | ||
| I think some are. | ||
| I think when I think about the kind of panoply of statements that we've seen over the last week, Pete Buttigieg gave a really, I thought, a really effective argument on this. | ||
| I think there have been others who have. | ||
| It is a big, significant foreign policy muscle movement, and understandably, people have their own individual lines of criticism. | ||
| But I think for those who are driving the political message for the Democrats, that's where they should be. | ||
| Some, I think, are doing it effectively. | ||
| I suspect as time goes on and questions begin to emerge about what our role in running, or as Scott says, improving Venezuela may be, I suspect there may be ample opportunity for Democrats to further that message, and I really think that's where their focus should be. | ||
|
Domestic Politics and Health Care
00:13:00
|
||
| Scott, to Kate's point, I was told by White House officials all through the end of last year that 2026 is going to be all about affordability, cost of living, the economy. | ||
| He's going to be pounding the pavement on that issue. | ||
| And we kick off 2026 literally with a bang. | ||
| And we are talking about Venezuela. | ||
| We're talking about Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Greenland. | ||
| Is the president taking a political risk here? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I mean, the decision to go into Venezuela at all was a massive risk. | ||
| I mean, it took some real cojones, since we're talking about Latin America, to make that decision. | ||
| I mean, look, if anything had gone wrong, if an American soldier had died in this operation, if one of our law enforcement personnel had died or been seriously injured, I mean, think about the risk that Donald Trump took here. | ||
| It took a lot of guts to do it, but we had to do it. | ||
| The guy's under federal indictment. | ||
| We don't recognize him as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela. | ||
| They're involved in drugs. | ||
| They're doing stuff with oil that we don't approve of. | ||
| They're in league with Iran, China, Russia, Cuba. | ||
| I mean, these are not our friends. | ||
| And so just because you have domestic priorities, which the president does, doesn't mean you can take your eye off the ball when it comes to energy, national security, and how those things do actually impact. | ||
| It's not like it was just a one-and-done operation. | ||
| I know a lot of Republicans have been focused on exactly what happened and the execution of it, which was really impressive, but we're not done. | ||
| I mean, we just talked about running or improving the country, whatever that means. | ||
| Like, this is going to continue to be a focus for the administration. | ||
| The president told the New York Times that this is going to be probably a years-long project for the U.S. | ||
| And we're also trying to solve wars between Russia and Ukraine, and we're involved in Gaza and the Middle East. | ||
| So, I mean, do you worry that with the midterms coming up, there is too much of a focus from the administration on foreign policy and they're not hammering the drum enough on domestic issues? | ||
| Well, look, we're just a few days into January of 2026. | ||
| They've got all year. | ||
| And all we've talked about is Venezuela. | ||
| Do I worry? | ||
| Well, but do I worry about the administration standing up to China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba, who are mucking around in our backyard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I mean, if I were Democrats, I would be worried about, look, the hypocrisy on this, frankly, I think has been pretty stark. | ||
| I mean, it was just last year that the Biden administration put a $25 million bounty on Maduro. | ||
| And now you have Democrats out criticizing President Trump for arresting this guy who previously the Democratic administration correctly recognized as a dictator who needed to be brought to justice. | ||
| So I actually think two Democrats I saw only two put out correct statements, John Fetterman and Josh Gottheimer. | ||
| I thought they both had it just right, but I think the rest of the Democrats were struggling with something they struggle with all the time, which is if Donald Trump is for it, I have to be against it. | ||
| But sometimes things that Donald Trump is for are okay. | ||
| In fact, they're good, and I think what we're doing in Venezuela is good. | ||
| Now, that doesn't mean Donald Trump can ignore domestic affairs. | ||
| I think your question is about domestic politics and how all these things are going to play in the midterms. | ||
| I think what he's got to do is get with Congress here and start talking to them about something I picked up on Capitol Hill this week, and that's how are we going to pass some bills? | ||
| And what I picked up from Speaker Johnson, Majority Leader Scalise, and August Pfluger, head of the Republican Study Committee, is that I since they're about to start Budget Reconciliation 2.0, which is the process that delivered the big beautiful bill last summer, I get the feeling they're headed in that direction. | ||
| So he needs to pay a little bit of attention to that as well and make sure he gets the credit when the House and Senate Republicans start passing legislation. | ||
| So Scott, should we invade Greenland this year or what? | ||
| No, we shouldn't invade it. | ||
| We should buy it. | ||
| I mean, this is obvious. | ||
| We should make a deal with Denmark and buy it. | ||
| And by the way, this is not a crazy idea. | ||
| You know who else wanted to do it? | ||
| William Seward back in the Lincoln administration. | ||
| You know who else wanted to do it? | ||
| Harry S. Truman. | ||
| For time immemorial, presidents and administrations have recognized that we should have Greenland. | ||
| Denmark doesn't even do a good job with it anyway. | ||
| Let's make a deal. | ||
| Let's get Greenland. | ||
| It's good for America. | ||
| It's good for national security. | ||
| It'll be good for the world. | ||
| And I think Trump's got an inspired idea on this, and I hope he can make a deal on it. | ||
| But no, we're not going to invade Greenland, but buying it is a great idea. | ||
| Well, Kate, before I have you jump in, I want you to take a listen to Caroline Levitt on this issue this week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not rule out taking it by military force? | |
| I know that past presidents and past leaders have often ruled things out. | ||
| They've often been very open about ruling things in and basically broadcasting their foreign policy strategy to the rest of the world, not just to our allies, but most egregiously to our adversaries. | ||
| That's not something this president does. | ||
| All options are always on the table for President Trump as he examines what's in the best interests of the United States. | ||
| But I will just say that the president's first option always has been diplomacy. | ||
| So Kate, what's going on here? | ||
| Okay, so in the spirit of ceasefire, I am going to throw Scott Jennings a bone and say I agree with what he said in his previous answer about the fact that presidents cannot ignore foreign policy. | ||
| They cannot stop engaging in foreign policy. | ||
| Who really can? | ||
| The assignment is amazing. | ||
| They can't just decide. | ||
| Thank you, Kate. | ||
| Thank you, Kate. | ||
| You're welcome, Scott. | ||
| The horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other quite a bit. | ||
| That's the premise of this show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a lot more of that than people realize. | |
| I'm exposed. | ||
| I'm exposed. | ||
| Sorry, Scott. | ||
| Don't tell your Twitter followers. | ||
| So, but here's the thing, okay? | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| To me, this Greenland, all of the kind of theatrics around Greenland, this is an example of a poor political decision on Trump's part. | ||
| It's incredibly unpopular. | ||
| The idea of invading Greenland incredibly unpopular. | ||
| It's like 75% of Americans say we shouldn't do that. | ||
| Even the idea of buying it, which, by the way, the Danes have said it's not for sale. | ||
| Greenland has said we're not for sale. | ||
| Also unpopular. | ||
| This is a public relations fight that Trump is picking that has opportunity costs for him. | ||
| He could be using this time to talk about the economy, to talk about prices, talk about affordability. | ||
| But he's choosing to have this sort of bombastic back and forth about Greenland. | ||
| It admittedly gets headlines, it gets clicks, but do they serve his interests in the end? | ||
| I would argue they don't politically. | ||
| And so I think this is an example of the kind of Trump throw everything outrageous at the wall and see what sticks strategy that is not smart. | ||
| And I think, again, Democrats have a huge opportunity here to really try to nail him to the wall on this. | ||
| All right, we don't have too much time left. | ||
| And I do want to talk about some domestic stuff to our point earlier. | ||
| Scott, you talked about the president needing to work with Congress to pass some stuff. | ||
| This week, he told Republicans he wants them to own the issue of health care. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Listen. | |
| Now you take the health care issue away from them and they want to fight it. | ||
| You know why? | ||
| They're all owned by the insurance companies and they cannot fight it successfully. | ||
| There's nothing they can do. | ||
| Let the money go in the health care account or however you do it. | ||
| Let the money go directly to the people. | ||
| Now you have to be a little flexible on Hyde. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| You got to be a little flexible. | ||
| You got to work something. | ||
| You got to use ingenuity. | ||
| You got to work. | ||
| All right. | ||
| A lot to unpack there. | ||
| First of all, Scott, can Republicans actually do what the president is asking for here? | ||
| Is that possible? | ||
| Well, the House Republicans actually passed a bill right before Christmas that the CBO said would lower insurance premiums by 11%. | ||
| So some legislation has been moving. | ||
| There are other conversations going on in the House and in the Senate about what to do on these Obamacare premium subsidy issues. | ||
| Also, as I mentioned earlier, I do think they're going to pursue budget reconciliation. | ||
| And as I understand it, health care is going to be one of the pillars that they put in there along with housing affordability and some more energy stuff, maybe. | ||
| So I do think Trump's impulse on this is correct. | ||
| We're the majority party, so throwing out ideas and legislation to fix things is a good idea. | ||
| But look at the math here. | ||
| The House majority is down to a one seat, and you've got a small under 60 majority, of course, in the Senate. | ||
| So keeping the team corralled is vital. | ||
| If anyone could do it, it's Donald Trump. | ||
| There's a lot of ideas in play. | ||
| I don't think there's like a silver bullet idea that's going to fix all health care issues. | ||
| There's probably five, six, seven small ideas that when you combine them, you could reasonably present to the American people. | ||
| Obamacare failed, and here are all the things we came along to do to fix it. | ||
| So there's things moving, there's conversations happening, but I think the president's impulse to do something and to make the insurance companies the bad guys here and say Democrats are in the pocket of the insurance companies is a good political instinct. | ||
| Scott, you also heard the president there talk about the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortions. | ||
| How much is that going to be a sticking point for Republicans? | ||
| And did he step into some tricky territory there? | ||
| Well, first of all, President Trump is recognized by Republicans as an extraordinarily important pro-life leader. | ||
| He's made policy decisions and judicial appointments that everybody appreciates. | ||
| So he's got a lot of credibility and a lot of capital on pro-life issues. | ||
| On Hyde, it will be an issue for some pro-life Republicans in the Congress, a lot of pro-life Republicans. | ||
| So how they operationalize or how they react to what he had to say, I'm waiting to see. | ||
| But I have heard some rumblings in the grassroots that that's not going to be something that they're going to want to do, be flexible on that. | ||
| But again, there's a lot of things at play here and a lot of ideas in the water. | ||
| I don't think the Republican Party, frankly, should turn away from its pro-life bona fides. | ||
| But at the same time, I think the president was trying to say to them: be as creative as you can to get to a solution. | ||
| If there's one thing I learned about in writing the book, Trump's an outcomes-based guy. | ||
| He's trying to get to an outcome. | ||
| And, you know, he's willing to be flexible and color outside the lines of what you would consider to be normal ideological bounds to get there. | ||
| That's one of his leadership strengths. | ||
| And I think he was just encouraging the Republicans: don't be hemmed in by old arrangements. | ||
| If you can find a creative way to do something good today, do it. | ||
| But the pro-life issues are important to a lot of members of Congress. | ||
| There's no question about that. | ||
| Kate, when you hear Scott and the president talk about Republicans owning health care, is that something that worries Democrats or are Democrats chomping at the bit and saying, go for it, we'll take you on here? | ||
| I think Democrats would be thrilled to have health care be front and center across the course of this campaign year. | ||
| I think, you know, congressional Democrats have gotten a lot of flack for essentially their, some would argue, lack of leadership, lack of cohesion across 2025. | ||
| I think they do need to be given credit for forcing through the shutdown mechanism, forcing this debate about health care subsidies to the fore. | ||
| And then secondly, I think Hakeem Jeffries deserves some credit for forcing the discharge petition for keeping Democrats together and for getting to a place where we're now looking at Democrats having put forth a bill, a clean bill, to extend these subsidies and help keep health care costs down for people. | ||
| And Republicans, particularly in purple districts, are in a tough spot because they vote against it. | ||
| And that is going to be in a television ad for the duration of 2026. | ||
| So I think Democrats should get some credit for driving this issue from a political standpoint to the fore. | ||
| And I think if Democrats are looking at Donald Trump saying, hey, we got to try to own health care, that's a good day for Democrats. | ||
| And that's a win because that is ground that they want to be fighting on. | ||
| Scott, does any of what Kate just said make you nervous at all? | ||
| Not really, because I think the Republican retort is, wait a minute, the health care regime in the United States is called Obamacare. | ||
| Obama was a Democrat president. | ||
| The Obamacare subsidies were put in by Democrats. | ||
| The sunset on the subsidies put in by Democrats. | ||
| And so now you want to blame Republicans for a problem that was fully of Democrats making. | ||
| We're going to try to solve these problems, but let's all have a rational, reasonable, and honest conversation about the American health care system. | ||
| We live under Obamacare. | ||
| Obama was a Democrat. | ||
| And so for Democrats to be running around saying somehow this is all the Republicans' fault, I don't think voters are going to buy that. | ||
| I do think what they're looking for are solutions. | ||
| I think that's why the president, his impulse here, is, hey, let's do something. | ||
| Let's pass a bill. | ||
| Let's show the American people that even though we have a failed system, there's actually some reasonable adults in Washington who are interested in outcomes and solutions more than just campaign rhetoric. | ||
| I admire Scott's effort. | ||
| I think that is a really tough argument when Obama has not been president for 10 years and Donald Trump is the president now. | ||
| I think politics happens in the now. | ||
| And I think trying to lay an argument at the foot of a president who hasn't been in office for a decade is not going to feel relevant to most voters. | ||
|
Immigration's New Political Landscape
00:15:56
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| Kate, if I were you, I would want to forget all about the Obama years as well, but we're not going to let you off the hook. | ||
| We're not going to let you go. | ||
| All right, you two. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, you know, the good news is that both of your theories are going to get tested pretty much in real time here. | ||
| So all right, that's all the time we have. | ||
| Thank you both so much, my friends. | ||
| Kate Bettingfield, former Biden White House Communications Director, and Scott Jennings, former special assistant to President George W. Bush. | ||
| Thank you both for joining Ceasefire. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, let's turn now to this week's C-SPAN Flashback, where we dig deep into the video archives to show you a moment in political history that relates to today. | ||
| The year was 1987. | ||
| The Democratic-controlled Senate was considering war powers legislation in response to the Reagan administration deploying U.S. naval ships to the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War to protect oil shipping. | ||
| Here's then-Nebraska Democratic Senator James Exxon, a top member of the Armed Services Committee on C-SPAN, explaining why Congress needed to act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Should the War Powers Act apply to the Persian Gulf? | |
| Yes, I think it should, Jim, for a lot of good reasons. | ||
| But the main reason, of course, is the fact that the War Powers Act is the law of this land. | ||
| And all of us, when we came here, took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States. | ||
| And if we do not have a role to play, as the War Powers Act states, then we're not following the oath that we took when we became part of the most deliberative body in the world, the United States Senate. | ||
| It simply says that the President of the United States, in discharging his responsibilities as the Commander-in-Chief, has the right to do anything that he feels necessary to protect the vital interests of the United States of America. | ||
| Flash forward to this week with a similar debate playing out in the Senate over the Trump administration's recent actions in Venezuela. | ||
| The Senate on Thursday advanced legislation requiring congressional authorization for any future military intervention there. | ||
| To break down the developing situation in Venezuela and other big political stories of the week, we've got two political pros from both sides of the aisle. | ||
| Democratic strategist Jonathan Kott, he's a former senior advisor for Democratic Senator Chris Coons and former independent senator Joe Manchin. | ||
| And John Elliott, former acting Pentagon spokesperson during the current Trump administration, also a veteran of congressional and presidential politics. | ||
| Thank you both so much for being here. | ||
| Now, remember, you're not surrogates here today. | ||
| You're strategists giving us your expertise, peeling back the curtain for our viewers on why each of your parties is doing what they're doing. | ||
| I just played that flashback there, and we talked about what happened this week on Venezuela in Congress. | ||
| Now, the president is not so happy with the Republican senators who voted in favor of the war powers. | ||
| He put a post-on True Social saying, quote, Republicans should be ashamed of the senators that voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our powers to fight and defend the United States of America. | ||
| Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again. | ||
| This does feel like some of the more aggressive language that he's used, even with the moderate senators, but especially with someone like Hawley. | ||
| What is your perspective on how the president is handling this and whether this could become a real rift for Republicans? | ||
| Well, Dasha, thanks for having us on. | ||
| I think this is a program that you've done really well with in terms of breaking down the usual left-right. | ||
| And hopefully we can provide a little perspective. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So my perspective, I don't go as far back as Senator Exxon, obviously, from back in 87, but I was in the Senate when there was a lot more flexibility between parties as there is now. | ||
| And I think a lot of that is from social media. | ||
| And there was not an online presence back then. | ||
| This was during the Iraq War in the 2000s, essentially when George W. Bush had a very unpopular war that was unraveling after Saddam Hussein was captured. | ||
| And then it started to really go south over there. | ||
| And I was spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee at that time. | ||
| And we had people like John McCain, John Warner, who's the chairman, Lindsey Graham, and others who broke with President Bush at the time and said, hey, we need to hold hearings into things like Abu Ghraib and whatnot. | ||
| And we even had Susan Collins, who's still in the Senate now, but she was there. | ||
| And so there was a lot more flexibility back then to do those. | ||
| And now that's just anathema to either party. | ||
| I mean, if you break it all with your party, then suddenly you're primaried. | ||
| Whereas back then, you had a lot more of, if you were a senator, you had a lot more power. | ||
| Now, President Trump, all he needs to say is you don't need to get, you know, you're not going to get re-elected. | ||
| And then suddenly you're primaried. | ||
| And so there's a strong disincentive for both parties. | ||
| Same thing in the Democrat Party, right? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's what's happening. | ||
| So I'd say that's a function of, number one, the era of social media is change. | ||
| That takes away a lot of the independence from senators. | ||
| But then the other thing I think is that President Trump himself, more than any other president probably in the last even 100 years, maybe going back to Teddy Roosevelt, is somebody who really speaks his mind. | ||
| And in this social, in the age of social media, he's somebody who can really take on in a way. | ||
| And that same personality allowed him to do a very good thing, which is to reposition the party into a more populist direction. | ||
| But that is what you get with President Trump, is that he speaks his mind. | ||
| Everybody's used to that. | ||
| And in this era, you crossman at your peril if you're a Republican. | ||
| I mean, Kot, this was led by Democrats, but you did have these Republicans sign on. | ||
| First of all, how surprised are you by that? | ||
| And what do you think this really accomplishes? | ||
| What is the goal here? | ||
| Because it's not something the president's going to sign. | ||
| No, he's not going to sign it. | ||
| I'm old enough to remember the phrase the politics ends at the water's edge. | ||
| I think that is a fossil of the old times of how we used to act in a bipartisan way in the Senate. | ||
| Every Congress, a president tries to take more power away from the legislative branch. | ||
| And every time Congress tries to pull a little bit back, this Congress has given the president almost every bit of the power. | ||
| This has been the first time. | ||
| I think it's interesting that he attacked Susan Collins. | ||
| She's the only one of those that's up for reelection. | ||
| And him not supporting her actually could have an impact. | ||
| Josh Hawley has carved out an interesting sort of new brand for himself. | ||
| Democrats have jokingly called him Comrade Hawley because he's taken such a populist position. | ||
| He's gone very pro-union. | ||
| He's attacked a lot of corporate CEOs in hearings, which you haven't seen from Republicans. | ||
| So I'm not so surprised to see him do it. | ||
| Todd Young, Lisa Murkowski, really principled, independent people. | ||
| I think Lisa Murkowski is probably the most independent senator we have right now after my old boss left. | ||
| But I think this is the first step that Congress has shown the president that we may not let you do everything you want. | ||
| Of course, this is more of a symbolic vote because he's not going to sign. | ||
| It's not going to really matter and he's going to do whatever he wants. | ||
| And we might be here next week discussing Greenland or Cuba or Bolivia or Mexico or Panama. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Can I just jump in real quickly where Kot was saying that, and once again, I'm a big fan of your two bosses, Manchin and Koons, both very good senators. | ||
| They obviously represent their party, but that's what they're there to do. | ||
| But they're both very thoughtful. | ||
| Real quick is that your point was a very good one about Susan Collins, because Susan Collins is probably the most right-leaning Republican that you can elect in Maine. | ||
| So if you're going to save that seat, which is very key for the majority, then you need to understand, or most people who really look into the race will understand that to attack her is to really cut into our majority. | ||
| Because if you get a firebreather on the right running for her seat and she gets primary, she loses to him, we're guaranteed it wasn't, who was it from Delaware, the witch? | ||
| Christine O'Donnell. | ||
| Christine O'Donnell, who was way far out for that state, and we lost that seat, which was winnable at the time. | ||
| And if you're Leader Thun and you see that post from the president, what are you thinking? | ||
| I'm thinking, look, he knows that the president speaks his mind, but it's probably a headache for him in terms of keeping the majority, no question. | ||
| I do want to talk about Minnesota here because that was a major devastating story this week. | ||
| Of course, as you all probably know, at this point, an ICE agent shot a protester. | ||
| DHS says the woman tried to run the officer over with her car. | ||
| There's video and people are taking vastly different conclusions from the same content that we're seeing online here. | ||
| I want to talk about more what this story says about this moment right now. | ||
| Take a listen to sort of the two different narratives that we're hearing from different leadership. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've been warning for weeks that the Trump administration's dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. | |
| Just yesterday, I said exactly that. | ||
| What we're seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict. | ||
| It's governing by reality TV. | ||
| And today, that recklessness costs someone their life. | ||
| Since President Trump took office, Governor Walls has released over 470 violent criminals back onto the streets here in Minneapolis. | ||
| He has another 680 of them still within his jurisdiction that he could give to us today to face the consequences for their crimes. | ||
| Because Governor Walls and Mayor Fry refuse to protect Minnesotans, and instead they protect these criminals, that's why we are here. | ||
| Cott, where is this headed? | ||
| I think we might be headed for a showdown around appropriations time. | ||
| I think Senator Murphy put out sort of a statement saying if Republicans aren't willing to put some guardrails on DHS in this next round of appropriations bills that are coming up, and we punted until I think January 30th, you could see another shutdown based solely on this action. | ||
| I think Democrats have sort of hit, you know, this is the breaking point. | ||
| They kept saying this was going to happen, and then it did. | ||
| And I think they're going to have to act, and they're going to have to show their constituents and their base that they're willing to do something. | ||
| They can't just send out some tweets, go on TV, and yell about it. | ||
| They have to do something, and they don't have a lot of levers of power. | ||
| I think that's something people forget when you're not in, when you're shut out of all three, you don't have any sort of paths to stop the president or the party in charge other than shutting down the government. | ||
| And they may need to do that if Republicans aren't willing to do some compromise on the DHS appropriations bills. | ||
| I was talking with our earlier guests about how the issue of health care is one that usually is a strong one for Democrats, and Trump telling Republicans to wait in could be risky for them. | ||
| Immigration is an issue that has largely been politically beneficial to Republicans. | ||
| What is the risk-reward here for Democrats to make that a fight? | ||
| It's a tough one because I think the Trump team has always felt if we're talking about immigration, we're winning, no matter what it is. | ||
| I remember when they were talking about eating the cats and the dogs. | ||
| They knew that wasn't true, but they knew as long as we were talking about immigration, that was a winner for them each day. | ||
| This is something that I think might be able to not switch it over into a Democratic advantage, but may neutralize the issue to where when we're going into the November elections, healthcare is number one, economy is number two, and immigration might be number three, whereas in other times, that has been reversed. | ||
| John, what do you think about what Kot's saying there? | ||
| Kot, I think you make some good points there. | ||
| I think one of the reasons why the immigration issue is not so much of an issue now is because Trump has secured the border. | ||
| I mean, there's actually a net negative in terms of illegal immigration now because you're having people self-deport. | ||
| You're also having other deportations that are not self-deporting. | ||
| And This is part of that ICE operation that's targeted mainly at violent criminal immigrants here. | ||
| And so, look, if you take a step back, I'm very supportive of obviously what ICE is doing. | ||
| And I think the president's done a great job in securing the border like no one else. | ||
| I mean, we went from having 13 million during Biden's time coming across the border illegally that we know of, then there's some unknown gotaways. | ||
| But the idea is that because President Trump has been so successful, he's taken that issue off the table, and people are thinking much more about affordability. | ||
| They're thinking much more about their bottom line economically. | ||
| And so he's somewhat of a victim of his own success because now when it looks like one thing I would say, Cott was pointing to this, and I think it's right, is that this particular in the age of social media when else, if you looked a decade ago where you could have the same video that both sides see, and then they disagree completely on what the lesson is or who is at fault and what the Rorschach test. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| So in this age of polarized media, it's something that if you, I think Kate made this point last time, is that no one's going to win the Twitter fight here. | ||
| Both parties are playing to their bases, and the issue is it's just another day that we as Republicans are not talking on issues that are really going to decide this election because the immigration one has been taken off as a result of the success. | ||
| So what about the whole affordability question? | ||
| And President Trump, I believe, has taken some great steps to solve that affordability question, but we're not talking about that right now because of the latest Twitter scam. | ||
| On this issue, the administration has been pretty unequivocal about what side they're on. | ||
| They are in total support of the ICE agent. | ||
| As I am as well. | ||
| I agree with them. | ||
| Do you think there's any political risk, though, to being so black and white on an issue where there is some concern by the people of Minnesota in particular? | ||
| I think there is. | ||
| But if we take a step back, a lot of Americans, including myself, we default to trusting in law enforcement. | ||
| And whenever we get away from that, it gets to a more dangerous place. | ||
| I think those were some terrible images of people who felt very strongly in their own view of what happened there, but they were throwing snowballs and banging on the side of the vehicles that were carrying the law enforcement. | ||
| Do you think that there's a potential that Democrats could take and run with this and say this has gone too far and get some of the moderate voters on their side here? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I mean, I think, once again, most Americans, you have the right and the left are outraged in different ways on this. | ||
| But if you do have a, if you do have a split, really, the people who are going to decide this next midterm election are, they're focused on kitchen table issues. | ||
| They're not focused on whether there was an overreach here or there. | ||
|
Fraud Allegations Crystallize
00:05:20
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| And then my only argument is that those same independent voters who don't really, they're not partisan and who are going to decide the election, they, in my view, default on supporting law enforcement. | ||
| Minnesota has been center stage for a number of issues. | ||
| The other one has been those fraud allegations. | ||
| The House Oversight Committee held a hearing this week on the fraud allegations and misuse of funds in Minnesota. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| Governor Waltz, Attorney General Ellison, and Minnesota Democrats failed to act despite countless warnings. | ||
| They failed Minnesotans and all Americans, handing millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudsters. | ||
| They failed children and others in Minnesota. | ||
| They failed their own state employees, some of whom have come forward as whistleblowers. | ||
| These whistleblowers have told us that the Waltz administration retaliated against employees who warned and alerted the administration to the fraud occurring within these social services programs. | ||
| Again, Governor Waltz accused employees who were simply doing their jobs of racism, Islamophobia, and threatened surveillance to silence it. | ||
| Republicans want to cut benefits and attack states with Democratic governors. | ||
| And what it's done, particularly in places like Minnesota, it has unleashed bigotry and hate. | ||
| Minnesota child care centers have become the target of harassment and even vandalism and theft. | ||
| Parents are afraid to drop their kids off in the morning and go to work. | ||
| This is an opportunity, again, to attack for the House majority and smear innocent people without evidence. | ||
| If we cared about fraud, we'd be starting at the very top. | ||
| Guys, this is the idea of fraud and even this story. | ||
| I mean, this has been something like other outlets have investigated for months and years. | ||
| Why is this just coming to the forefront now? | ||
| Well, it's coming to the forefront because there was a very aggressive videographer on the right who went and showed some of the, gave color to what were already allegations from several years ago and was something that crystallized in the, once again, in the social media environment that we're in right now. | ||
| Then suddenly people started to actually focus on this problem because no one was focusing on it from the mainstream media. | ||
| And then now you have somebody who, now people have to focus on the issue and it's a scandal. | ||
| I mean, you have $9 billion allegedly that were fraud of $9 billion in terms of taxpayer money, U.S. federal taxpayer money. | ||
| And so this is a very delicate situation, but it's a very easy one for a lot of people to understand. | ||
| They don't want money, the taxpayers' money, going to people who don't deserve it and having kids hurt at the same time. | ||
| So that's why it's been crystallized now is because it's come to light through a video and through the area of online media now. | ||
| Take a look at this from Roy Teixeira in the New York Times. | ||
| He wrote a piece saying Minnesota's fraud should be a wake-up call for Democrats, saying, quote, concerns about abuse of generous government programs helped power the rise of Reagan-era conservatism in the 1970s and 80s. | ||
| Could the criminal abuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in welfare costs in Minnesota, which has brought down the state's Democratic governor, Tim Waltz, be leveraged to similar broad political effect today? | ||
| Of course, the governor stepped aside from the race. | ||
| Kot, is this, you know, Democrats have been calling this just partisan politics, but should there be real concern for Dems here? | ||
| They should be concerned that there is fraud going on in child care, and they should be concerned that there's fraud going on anywhere because Democrats believe in social programs, and it's hard for us to continue to champion them if every year there's a new scandal that comes out and it allows sort of the far right to activate their base around this issue. | ||
| I mean, you just saw not only did people at DHS and HHS say they were reacting because of, I think Nick Shirley is the, I don't know, I'm not going to call him a reporter, but they said specifically it was because of him that they reacted. | ||
| And then Donald Trump pulled back congressionally appropriated funds from five Democratic states because he said there might be fraud. | ||
| There's no evidence of it, but he said, because of what happened in Minnesota, I'm not giving out this money that Congress had already appropriated, which I think some in the Democratic Party would argue is illegal. | ||
| But he's now able to say that because we have this scandal. | ||
| So if Democrats aren't going to take this seriously and aren't going to say, yes, there was fraud, yes, we need to address it, and yes, we need to handle it, it puts us in a tough position to champion these social programs going forward. | ||
| I would just say on Kot's point, absolutely, on the political implications of this, because once again, if you're talking about issues that are kitchen table issues that are really going to be for the swing voters, the core voters there, the less the Democrats can, the less they can have a focus on fraud and the more focus on affordability and other things, that's very good. | ||
|
Defense Secretary's Censure
00:05:34
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| So that's why the Democrats are probably looking to scramble for a way to respond to this and to turn it back on affordability and not so much on fraud because that undercuts any argument on affordability. | ||
| Since we do have John Elliott here, I want to talk about one of the headlines out of the Pentagon this week. | ||
| Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth censured Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly over a video where Kelly and other Democrats called on the military to resist unlawful orders. | ||
| Here's a portion of that video from last year. | ||
| We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community. | ||
|
unidentified
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We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. | |
| Americans trust their military. | ||
|
unidentified
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But that trust is at risk. | |
| This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. | ||
| Like us, you all swore an oath. | ||
| Our laws are clear. | ||
| You can refuse illegal orders. | ||
|
unidentified
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You can refuse illegal orders. | |
| You must refuse illegal orders. | ||
| No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. | ||
| Whether you're serving in the CIA, the Army, or Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical. | ||
| And know that we have your back. | ||
| So this week, Secretary Hegseth announced: quote, the department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings with a reduction in his retired grade resulting in corresponding reduction in retired pay. | ||
| To ensure this action, the Secretary of War has also issued a former formal letter of censure. | ||
| Of course, Senator Kelly was quick to respond. | ||
| Watch. | ||
| Let me make it perfectly clear. | ||
| This letter or anything that Pete Hegseth says or does to me is in no way going to affect the way I do my job and represent my constituents in the United States Senate. | ||
| Ain't happened. | ||
| So, you know, his option, you know, right now is he can continue with this kind of bullshit or he can go take a hike. | ||
| That's his option. | ||
| Right. | ||
| John, you worked under Secretary Hagseth. | ||
| What's his strategy here? | ||
| Well, I think I got along with Secretary Hagseth very well personally. | ||
| What I think here is he's absolutely right that this is, everybody looks at this and says that's a bogus video. | ||
| Look, I was a Marine officer, and when I was a Marine officer or anybody in my team and my Scout Sergeant Platoon team, we and they did not need to be told by lawmakers or anybody else that the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says that you cannot carry out, if your commander says shoot this old lady on the street, if you do that, then you're subject to punishment yourself. | ||
| Nobody's talking about that. | ||
| This is something that it's insinuating that there is some policy here that is illegal. | ||
| And so that whole video was not a good thing for the Democrats to go out and do that. | ||
| Totally disagree with the video, but I also disagree with Hagseth's making a big issue about this. | ||
| I mean, because by him doing that letter and saying, hey, we're going to blow this up into a big thing, he is really, I think he should focus on drone warfare, focus on things that are really important right now and not get into this tit-for-tat back and forth. | ||
| Because frankly, for Kelly, I think that Kelly should charge Hagseth for an in-kind contribution to his Democrat platform for him running for president. | ||
| Because the more that Hegseth tries to make this a big deal, the better it is. | ||
| I think he's already sent out two fundraising letters on the street. | ||
| Been on the Daily Show. | ||
| If you want to help him out, I mean, this is just politics on both sides. | ||
| And it was a bad call to make that video, but it's definitely a bad call to blow this up into some type of a political thing. | ||
| Before I let you both go, I want to pivot to one of my favorite segments here, not on my bingo card, where we highlight a funny, offbeat, or downright weird political or cultural moment. | ||
| While addressing House lawmakers at a GOP retreat this week, President Trump discussed his infamous dancing skills. | ||
| Trump's dance moves have been a common sight over the years, especially at his campaign events. | ||
| I've witnessed it many times myself. | ||
| But apparently, First Lady Melania isn't a fan. | ||
| Listen. | ||
| She hates when I dance. | ||
| I said, everybody wants me to dance. | ||
| Darling, it's not presidential. | ||
| She actually said, Could you imagine FDR dancing? | ||
| She said that to me. | ||
| And I said, It's a long history that perhaps she doesn't know. | ||
| Because he was an elegant fellow, even as a Democrat, right? | ||
| And I have to say this: the dancing they really like. | ||
| She said they don't like it, they're just being nice to you. | ||
| I said, That's not right. | ||
| The place goes crazy. | ||
| They're screaming, dance, please. | ||
| All right, Trump dancing. | ||
| Yay, nay, what do we think? | ||
| Absolutely, thumbs up. | ||
| I think that when you said, right after he was elected, do you remember seeing all those NFL players incorporating the Trump dance in the end zone? | ||
| So, hey, if it's good for the NFL, it's good for America. | ||
| I have no objection to his dance moves. | ||
| I think the song choice is rather amusing. | ||
| I think he might want to listen to the lyrics of YMCA or some of the songs he dances to. | ||
| They may not be in line with his political views. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He has a very eclectic musical taste, I will say. | ||
| He did, but YMCA is a very good idea. | ||
| I'll say it ranges from YMCA to like ACDC to Phantom of the Opera. | ||
| There's a lot going on on the Donald Trump playlist. | ||
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Sudden Loss
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| I would love to see his Spotify rap at the end of the year. | ||
| We'll put that request in for you. | ||
| All right, that is all the time we have. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Democratic strategist Jonathan Kott and Republican strategist John Elliott. | ||
| Thank you both so much. | ||
| Thanks, Tasha. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| And let's close this week's program with our ceasefire moment of the week, highlighting politicians coming together. | ||
| Bipartisan tributes poured in this week following the death of longtime Republican Congressman Doug Lamalfa of California. | ||
| Authorities say he suffered a medical emergency Monday night and died at the hospital during surgery. | ||
| LaMalfa was honored on the House floor by his former California colleagues, Republican Ken Calvert and Democrat Zoe Lofgren. | ||
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Yesterday, we learned of the sudden passing of our dear friend and colleague, Doug Lamalfa. | |
| As a fourth-generation rice farmer, Doug's experience shaped his advocacy for his Northern California constituents. | ||
| He first served them in the California legislature. | ||
| Then he was elected to the House of Representatives in 2012. | ||
| Doug was a good and decent man, an authentic public servant. | ||
| With Doug, what you saw is what you got. | ||
| As the tributes poured in over and over, people remembered his warmth, his wisdom, his sense of humor, kindness, and above all, his authenticity. | ||
| We are heartbroken at the news that we have lost Doug Lamalfa. | ||
| You know, we served with him so proudly and got to know him as a friend, someone who you could disagree with without being disagreeable. | ||
| We are in shock, and I would just like to add that our condolences go to the family that you have expressed so well. | ||
| Ken, all of us are heartbroken at this terrible news. | ||
| President Trump ordered flags at the White House to be lowered to half staff on Tuesday in his honor and expressed sorrow over his death. | ||
| Congressman Dougla Malfa was 65 years old. | ||
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Fda Commissioner On Tech Innovations
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| That's all the time we have for this episode. | ||
| Join us next time as I sit down with New Jersey Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer and New York Republican Congressman Mike Lawler. | ||
| CeaseFire is also available as a podcast. | ||
| Find us in all the usual places. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, and remember, whether or not you agree, keep talking and keep listening. | ||
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Saturday on C-SPAN, several events from the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. | |
| We'll start with remarks from Republican FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who talks about tech policy, and then its FDA Commissioner Martin McCary on the future of medicine in light of technological innovations. | ||