Mitch McConnell steps down, Donald Trump wins again
2024-03-01 00:30:02
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Sometimes there are weeks where the news just keeps on coming.
Mitch McConnell announced Wednesday he plans to step down from his post as the Republican leader in the upper chamber come November. Breaking news at the United States Supreme Court, the subject of our first story in the last hour, has just announced that it will hear.
Donald Trump's immunity case.
This week is one of those weeks.
This afternoon, the top four leaders in Congress agreed to a deal to avert a partial government shutdown for at least a week. This morning, Alabama lawmakers moving quickly to protecting IVF treatments. Weeks after the state Supreme Court ruling that defined a frozen embryo as an unborn child. Alright, more breaking news. An Illinois judge has just ruled that Donald Trump should be kicked off the ballot in the state.
In some ways, the Republican Party is the exact same entity we saw get behind Donald Trump in 2016 and again in 2020.
. But there are many who see the major events of this week as proof that it has changed irreversibly. This week, I speak to the former Republican strategist and legendary political operative, Mike Murphy, about the state of the party he once served. I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.
I'm a classic conservative, and I woke up and now I'm in a populist party waiting for the return of Juan Perón. We got an orange version of that now.
Mike Murphy is the co-director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, and co-host of the Hacks on Tap podcast. He's advised everyone, from John McCain to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeb Bush to Mitt Romney. But there's one Republican he won't be offering his services to anytime soon.
Technically, I'm a member of the Common Sense Party here in California, because we have party registration here, which is a bunch of us former Republicans who've had it with Trump, but we can fit into a phone booth. So I still identify as a Republican, but if Trump is our nominee, which is likely, I will, not with joy, but out of necessity, I'll vote for Joe Biden, which, as a professional Republican, is not easy for me to do.
And we've had a few of your fellow sufferers on the podcast over the years. Let's talk about the first of these quite momentous political events. Just by first, I mean, in a way, as you and I speak, the most recent, which is a decision which came late Wednesday night, our time anyway, from the Supreme Court, saying that they are going to hear arguments in this case pressed by Donald Trump seeking essentially immunity from prosecution in his case facing the allegation that he sought to overturn the 2020 election.
Now, President Trump lost in the Supreme Court of Appeals on this issue. The Court of Appeals, in a unanimous ruling with Republican and Democratic appointees, said that he does not have that kind of sweeping, absolute immunity from prosecution. So he went right to the Supreme Court and asked the court to put a hold on this case. Now, today, the court is saying the case will remain on hold, but they're also granting a request by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to consider the merits of this case. They're going to decide this case, and they're going to decide it relatively quickly.
They're setting arguments for the week of April 22nd.
The way that these things work out in terms of timetabling, that makes it much less likely that there will be a case, a trial, and a conviction this side of the November election. The question to you is, weren't people like you, in a way, pinning everything on the hope slash possibility of a conviction of Donald Trump? And that hope?
has now receded. Well, I think a lot of us in the, oh my God, not Trump again, faction, emotionally, we're excited about the idea of him paying a price for his crimes. I think in the fullness of time, you will. Politically, we are so divided here, and our institutions have been under such an assault of credibility and doubt that half the country thinks Trump should be in jail without a trial, and the other half doesn't trust the judiciary system. What the Republican Trump base will say is, well, wait a minute, how come Bill Clinton didn't go to jail, or Hillary for all they did, and Hunter Biden is all rigged, and they're trying to get Trump, and that doesn't affect my opinion.
So, net-net. politically, I think it will hurt them among general election voters. And, let's put it this way, I don't think it's as big of a driver of the election outcome as people think. And then, finally, our court system, culturally, is always very worried about interfering with elections. Now, a lot of people think the Supreme Court is more politicized now, particularly on the left, so they suspect a big plot to let Trump off the hook.
I'm no constitutional expert, legal expert, but I would bet money. they will not do that, and they will deny his claim. The question, as you put it, is speed, and what does that mean in the election calendar, and it probably does slow things down.
And just while we're talking about where courts and politics meet, Illinois became the third state to kick Donald Trump off the Republican primary ballot, citing the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those complicit or involved in insurrection from holding public office, and that's because of his role in the attack on the U.
S. Capitol. in January, the 6th. The judge there delayed her ruling from taking any effect because she says she wants to wait for the expected appeal by the former U.S. president.
I mean, how should we read this? Any implications or ramifications politically from these decisions, which are, you know, beginning, it's been Maine, it's been Colorado, it's more than one.
No, no, and there is a case to make. That said, culturally, I mean, I'm torn on this because I find it a persuasive case that Trump is unfit and guilty of sedition, myself. On the other hand, we are very careful here about using courts rather than cast ballots to decide big political questions. And so there's a lot of precedent here, which is very troubling, because once these genies get out of the box, then, you know, it can lead to bad conclusions. So my guess is it'll all become politicized in the argument and won't have a huge, huge effect.
And my guess is, legally, it will not be held up. But again, I'm not a professor of constitutional law, but this is very atypical to see courts starting to really get into ballot access in the middle of an election year. So this whole thing makes me squeamish. It's like doing surgery with a chainsaw. I don't like it.
Yeah, and you're one of those who wants to, you know, beat him fair and square at the ballot box. And, I suppose, mindful of the fact there will be a body of Americans, particularly on the right, if he's removed from power or blocked from power any other way, will always think it was a conspiracy and will resent it and won't accept it. And, as we've seen in 2020, even if it is a defeat at the ballot box, they'll still not necessarily accept it. I want to ask you about the other big political sort of story of the week before we get back onto the campaign. And that was the announcement by Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate, that this will be his last stint as leader, that he'll serve out his term as Senator for Kentucky, but that he will no longer be the leader after the November election.
One of life's most underappreciated talents is to know when it's time to move on to life's next chapter.
What do you think led him to make the decision? And very, you know, politically, why announce?
it now? That's the big question. It was expected that after this year, after the elections, he may step down for a combination of health and age and just exhaustion. He has a terribly hard job, essentially herding feral cats around all the time. Every senator thinks they're a president.
He can't abide Trump. I don't think they've spoken since around 2021 or 2020.. And I bet he's tired. I think even Superman at 82 has to say, I can't hold the world up anymore. So now we're going to have an interesting battle to succeed him.
There are three candidates running, all named John. John Cornyn of Texas, John Thune of South Dakota, and John Rosasso. I think I'm mispronouncing his name. So apologies to the good senator from Wyoming. And they represent different factions.
Thune is kind of the most McConnell, hair apparent, pragmatist of the group. Probably the frontrunner, but boy, we're going to have a lot of politics to go. And a lot of people are very shocked. he moved this quickly. And I can't tell you I know why.
And the how to read McConnell's departure, take the point completely about exhaustion and age and so on. But this did follow a battle that he lost, unusually for him, which was to get aid through to Ukraine. Old school Republican, Reagan, Republican, anti-Russian politics that you would have thought normally would command an easy majority. He didn't manage to get that through the way it passed in the Senate, but it's not going to become law. It won't even be tabled because of the reluctance of Republicans in the House.
I just wondered if this was a sign that others in the Republican Party, who are not fans of Donald Trump, are in a way making the move you made, Mike, which is to, on some level, give up their fight as Republicans because they, on some level, know they're beaten. And I was thinking about Ronald McDaniel, who was head of the Republican National Committee. You think about Kevin McCarthy, who was speaking at the House. I just wonder if people who aren't fully branded Trump, you know, seared into their skin, are somehow feeling this is a battle they can't win.
I'm still fighting. The problem is I have a rather small panzer division here, but I'm going to go down swinging all the way. But your larger point about some of these legislative leaders, like McCarthy, I think, is true. They get to the point where they don't have the votes anymore, and I think Mitch is tired of, and I'm guessing here, but a fragmented caucus. I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous.
When I started in all this, I was a student at Georgetown in the early 80s, and we would go out and get arrested demonstrating at the Soviet embassy. And so here we are.
It just is, it's unthinkable, and it's exhausting to an old-school conservative like Mitch. But one of the troubling things about the Senate is there's a good chance, after the next elections, forgetting whether or not the Republicans hold majority or not, I think they're slightly favored, too. But a lot of the grown-up knife-and-fork-eating Republicans are leaving. Mitt Romney, Joe Manchin, who's kind of a fusion. He's a Democrat, but he often votes with the Rs.
The pragmatists are given up and not running or worried they're going to lose in primaries. So the Senate, which has been different from the House, which is kind of the Republican rabble, is becoming more like the House, quite potentially, which would be a real disaster, particularly if a Trump presidency. So it is a dark, dark time in the old right-of-center Burkean Republican Party right now, but you never give up. You never quit. I think we learned that lesson from a former prime minister of yours.
And post-Trump, I think there can be a reformation. And step one is, we Republicans who believe this way have to kind of some quietly, some publicly help lift up Joe Biden, who's in great political trouble, and try to get him reelected.
I just wonder if, looking back, the sort of political obituary of him will say that the biggest mistake he made was not convicting Donald Trump in the Senate in that second impeachment in 2021, when he had the chance, because, of course, if he had done that, and led Republicans to vote to convict rather than to acquit, Donald Trump would have been barred from public office thereafter, and he would not be in this position, where Donald Trump is essentially the leader of the Republican Party and potentially the next president.
If he had a time machine, I'm guessing here, I have a lot of respect for Mitch McConnell. I've been on opposite sides of political things with him, and also allied at times. I'll bet he wishes. he made that vote. He had some legitimate concerns at Senate institutional stuff about what triggers impeachment and what happens in the courts.
But also, as a leader, a polarizing vote that would have beyond split the caucus is kind of a anathema to the sort of way he normally governed as Republican leader. So it was a hard leap for him. But I'll bet in his heart he wanted to do it, because I know he has contempt for Trump, and has for a long time, and I.
wish he had. As it is, though, Donald Trump is very much still in the game. As we speak, we're in between contests, really, because we've had South Carolina. President Donald Trump.
moves closer to locking up the Republican nomination with a double digit win over Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary.
We had one stage of the Michigan.
voting. Former President Donald Trump has built up a massive lead of more than 30 points thus far over Nikki Haley in this Republican primary.
And we have Super Tuesday just ahead of us. Nikki Haley, the last remaining Republican opponent against Donald Trump, is soundly beaten. You know, there's arguments about the margin. Why is she still running,
do you think? Well, that is a great question. She is providing the most entertaining dead cat bounce in the history of American nomination politics. We.
need to beat Joe Biden in November. Yes!
Yes!
I don't believe.
Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden. I'm of two minds. You know, because she's not Trump, I'm for her. I'm not the biggest Haley fan in the world, because I think she's untethered and very cynical. But in her heart, she feels about Trump the way she's finally expressing, after keeping it magnificently camouflaged for a year, which hurt her in her campaign.
Nobody's sure really where she lands. But here she is. She's doing it, but she's going to lose. It's a delegate game, and Trump is holding on to a solid 70% of the party. It seems quixotic.
If she wants to run again, and many Republican nominees always run twice to get there, she should have gotten out a week ago, because it's becoming tribal heresy to stay in. All that said, Nikki beating herself to death against Trump is a good thing for hurting Trump. There is a solid 20-25% Republican Party who doesn't want Trump, and Nikki is kind of their vessel. So she's serving the country, but she's ending her own Republican career simultaneously.
Is she ending it, though, if Donald Trump crashes and burns? And I mean by this, not necessarily that he... Well, first of all, if he loses in November, but if he wins, and it's a truly disastrous presidency and the Republican Party has to rebuild in the future, might they not turn to the woman who can say, I told you so?
Well, yeah, I made that argument right after New Hampshire. I write a sub-stack column when I'm feeling cranky. But the problem is she has to get out to do that. My advice to her was get out of the race right after South Carolina, even before, and go away. Announce your support, the Republican nominee, check that box, but have no visible role, and then come back after the next Trump disaster, either losing to Biden or a disastrous presidency, which would then have a bad midterm election.
Either way, by 2027, there's going to be an appetite. Reappear, and you're the I told you so candidate. The problem, I argued and believe, with staying in this long, is in the party faithful mind, she's evolving from an interesting alternative, but maybe not yet, who might have been right about Trump, to a surrogate for the Democratic Party. now that the matter's essentially settled. And it's still a tribe.
Politics in the U.
S. is more tribal than ever, so she's moving into Chris Christie heretic land quickly, which is a hard stain to remove.
So that means the other person who's going to be the last obstacle left before a Donald Trump returned to the White House, and that is Joe Biden. You have, in your own writing, your own broadcasting, we have here endlessly gone over all of the obvious flaws in Donald Trump, and yet, in polls in key swing states, Biden trails behind him. How, from this distance, should we understand it? Is it ultimately all about his age? In other words, if he was 20 years younger, would he be comfortably beating Donald Trump?
Perhaps. Perhaps. He's never been a particularly gifted candidate. He comes from Delaware, which is a safe Democratic state, so he was never really tested. So our presidential races, when an incumbent is running, not an open seat, but a re-election, are really like one and two-thirds way races, not two-way.
The first fundamental question people ask themselves is, do I want to keep or fire the incumbent I have? Do I like what I have, or can I abide it, or do I want something new, new being the most powerful word in advertising? So Biden's prop now is based on perceptions of the economy. And again, perception is reality. in our politics.
He's seen as failing on the economy, so fire Biden. And his age multiplies. that, amplifies it. Oh, he's too old to be able to run the economy. No wonder it's all screwed up.
And the way people in their lives measure the economy is not the statistics and the arguments in the newspaper. It's what do they pay for groceries every week, or what do they pay for their truck payment in the U.S., or their apartment rental, or house payment. So that's where inflation is just a politician killer, because I'm buying the same stuff that costs a lot more. That is what's killing, Biden. If you ask people in polling, do you like Biden or not, they say, no, fire Biden.
What about Trump? Can't stand him. Well, who would be better of these two people you don't like? at running the economy? Trump beats Biden by double digits, and that is intolerable for an incumbent president.
If that is the case in October, Trump, even if he's in a straitjacket, is probably going to win.
And we saw this in Carter Reagan in 1980.
. Carter's the incumbent president. For a lot of reasons, he was very unpopular. People wanted to fire him, and all the Democrats said, they're not going to elect a senile old movie actor from California who starred in Bedtime for Bonzo with a chimp. Well, they did, because the threshold for trying something new when you don't like what you have is pretty low.
So hopefully the Biden campaign will sharpen. I was heartened. the other day he went on one of our late-night popular shows, and they finally gave him a line about age, which was... Well, a couple things. Number one, you've got to take a look at the other guy.
He's about as old as I am, but he can't remember his wife's name.
Got a huge laugh from the audience, and they started to let a little of the energy out of this thing, which is what they've got to do.
I thought of you. I heard that clip. It was to Seth Meyers, and I thought of you when I heard it, because you for months have been saying that he should say something like, yeah, we're both old, but he's crazy. And I thought to myself, they've been listening to you when they wrote that line for Joe Biden to say, you know, he can't remember his wife's name. I wondered, when I heard that clip, I thought, well, to you, is that good enough?
Is that good enough to neutralize the age issue?
Well, not that one clip, but that direction. sure is. Biden loosening it up and pulling Trump into. he's old, too, and they'll compare us. And Biden went on to do a riff, which wasn't bad, about.
his ideas are old. He wants to take away your right to make a choice about abortion. He wants to go back to this, go back to that. Now, the other thing I've been pushing the Biden folks to do is he has a very talented cabinet. And, you know, we don't run cabinet politics here like you guys do.
Nobody knows who the Secretary of Labor or Commerce is. But he's got the whole bench of the next town. Mitch Landrieu, one of the best natural politicians in the country, running the infrastructure investment. Gina Raimondo, who ought to be president. Pete Buttigieg, who's incredibly talented.
Surround Biden with those people. Now, the White House, which thinks too defensively, will say, well, that'll make Biden look old. And my argument is, you've lost that battle. It's like he has antlers coming out of his head. The old thing is done.
So surround him with the action team of young geniuses, because the Trump team are all dregs. You wouldn't buy a used car from them. So I think they're lurching into offense now, which is a good sign. Not so much about hurting Trump. more.
People already highly dislike Trump. A box of hammers could beat Trump. The problem with Biden is they want to fire him, so he's having trouble beating Trump. But showing Biden more on the attack, loosening up, letting the energy out of this stuff, talking about age, that helps improve Biden, moving up his favorable, which is the key to winning this election.
And you don't have any patience for, or don't think it's credible, the scenario offered by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and others that says Biden himself should step aside and make way for one of those newer, younger leaders you've described.
I've been making that argument for a year. People all do speeches. People say, well, you know, I'm a worried Democrat. How do we save Biden? I said, well, go to Area 51, borrow the alien time machine, go back a year and get Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan or one of the rising stars of the party to run.
I just don't believe that's possible anymore, because the way our, if you're the incumbent president, you don't want to go, you don't go. And if he did go, it would be anarchy. now, because a lot of the primary filing deadlines are gone. There is a risk it would land in the clutches of the Democratic National Committee, which means three union presidents would pick who the next president is, and they could do even worse. But I would have loved if Joe Biden figured out, you know, time to declare victory and let a few of these young tigers fight it out, and one of them will certainly be Trump, and I saved the country.
Let's go to.
Alabama. Yes. Senate Democrats have tried to move forward with a bill that would grant protection for Americans for the IVF process, in vitro fertilization, securing access for that. after the Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled that frozen embryos are and have the rights of a person, which led to the closure of multiple infertility clinics across Alabama. Democrats want to protect the right for IVF for people who are seeking to have children.
That bill comes after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos should be protected as people. How have Republicans got?
themselves into this position? How do you think the politics of that plays out? Does this help Democrats, so they can say, now they're coming even after, you know, the chance for families to have children? Well,
it's been a bit of a disaster. Thank you, Alabama.
Most politicians in the party are running away from it. I mean, because of our federal system with 50 governors who were elected and state legislatures, the way we're set up, there's a time honored kind of political disaster that can happen where.
a rock.
ribbed Republican state with a Supreme Court that believes they've got a hotline to God does some crazy outlier, and then it starts to pollute the whole brand. It would be like all of a sudden if all communications from the Labor Party were driven by, I don't know, the local council in Stoke-on-Trent or something, and some wild-eyed socialist decides, to, you know, declare gasoline illegal in the UK. In our world, when that happens, it becomes nationalized. So just about everybody else, including a lot of Alabama politicians, have run away from this thing, saying, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. So I think this thing will melt away as, boy, there's some kooks in Alabama in the Republican Party.
That said, the larger issue of abortion rights is the Democrats' favorite hammer to try to change the debate on the election from fire Joe Biden to. can you believe? those crazy Republicans want the abortion police chasing your sister around. And that issue in most places has traction for the Democrats. We've already learned that in some state level elections.
And I think that national Republicans are dying to try to make it go away, and this Alabama thing is very unhelpful, but I think it's more of a squall than a lasting storm. That particular issue, they're going to bury it.
Mike, we always ask our guests on the podcast a what else? question, something completely different. So I have to ask a little bit of local interest from our side. Were you impressed to see former Prime Minister Liz Truss turn up at CPAC, the conservative right-of-center gathering last weekend and last week, and say we need a Republican back in the White House. We need it desperately.
And by the way, it's not just America that needs it desperately. We need it desperately right across.
the free world, because you are.
the leaders of the free world, like it or not. She said we need Republicans that are willing to fight against the establishment, which sounds like an endorsement of Donald Trump to me.
Yeah, I, she doesn't understand that CPAC is kind of a kook convention. in our party. There were other Tory MPs who understood the American power structure. Michael Gove understood how to understand. And he went to the idea people, which is what you do.
So there are no shortage of clever Tories who occasionally show up. But when you go for the flashballs with the people with the lock Hillary up t-shirts at CPAC, you're working the undercard there. So I don't think it was particularly. It's kind of the funny US-American thing, though, because if you show up in Washington and you have a British accent, people instantly think you're 40% smarter. It's just unbelievable.
And on the other hand, a little bit of our crazy politics is probably attractive to a Liz Truss. Doesn't have a lot else to do. I'll come over and hang out with the fancy Americans and show everybody back home what a player I am. But then she goes to the kook fest. So I would call that a swing and a miss.
Mike Murphy, thank you so much for joining me on Politics Weekly, America. Great to have you.
Thank you.
And that is all from me for this week. If you fancy something a bit different, I wanted to mention a brilliant new six-part Guardian podcast series that started this week. It's called Black Box, and it's all about artificial intelligence and our relationship with it. The host, Michael Safi, explores the ways in which AI might help us, and the ways in which it could be extremely dangerous. Each episode follows a different story, from deepfakes to facial recognition.
New episodes are out every Monday and Thursday, so do subscribe to Black Box wherever you get your podcasts. Also, for anyone who liked our Taylor Swift conspiracy theory episode, and wants to learn more about the ways in which Swift is influencing the entire world, my colleague Laura Snapes has launched a new newsletter following the pop stars, Travails and Triumph. There's a link to that newsletter, rather brilliantly called Swift Notes, on today's episode description on the Guardian website. But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Daniel Stephens, the executive producer is Maz Ebtehaj.
And I'm Jonathan Friedland. Thanks, as always, for listening.
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