Quote · The Rest Is Politics: US
199. White House Shouting Match: Is Trump Sabotaging His Own Party?
Where this was said
Is Trump Burning Down His Own Party?
At 11:53 · chapter starts 9:30
With the staging of the abandoned signing ceremony and the Cassidy shouting match fully laid out, the hosts turn to the bigger question: is this incompetence or intent? Scaramucci is unequivocal — Trump is burning it down on purpose. [1] — Anthony Scaramucci "Trump has cost Republicans the Senate seats of Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, is blocking a veto-proof housing bill, and is refusing to rene…" 06:25 He lists the evidence: Trump cost Bill Cassidy his Senate seat, effectively cost John Cornyn his, is blocking a veto-proof housing bill, and is refusing to renew the FISA intelligence law. This is a man, Scaramucci says, who at 80 has stopped caring about polls, party, or consequence. Haberman herself has noted the classic disinhibition of an aging man who has simply decided to do whatever he wants. Katty Kay, channelling the Republican strategist she's imagining in the room, offers a starkly different tone: her message to Congressional Republicans is that they are on their own. [2] — Katty Kay "Katty Kay's advice to every Republican who has cleared their primary: you are now in the YOLO caucus. Distance yourself from the White Hous…" 11:53 Worse than that, she says, they may have an active adversary in the White House. The president drove them into a war they didn't need, pushed up gas prices, and has now pulled the rug from under their best shot at a housing policy win. Kay's advice to those past their primaries: YOLO. Distance yourself from Washington. Raise your own money. Run your own race. Because associating with anything happening in Washington right now — including, she notes dryly, the green algae-laced Reflecting Pool — is electoral poison.
Trump employed a pocket veto — simply not signing the bill — to avoid the embarrassment of an official veto being overridden by a veto-proof majority in Congress.
Katty Kay's advice to every Republican who has cleared their primary: you are now in the YOLO caucus. Distance yourself from the White House, raise your own money, and run on your own record. The president's approval is at rock bottom, Washington looks like crazy town, and your only path to reelection is to make voters forget you were ever associated with any of it.
