MR. KANE: Happy to be here, Sean.
MR. SULLIVAN: So, PK, I want to start with some of the biggest news on Capitol Hill last week, which was this decision by Kevin McCarthy, who’s going to be leaving Congress at the end of this year. He’s not running for reelection. You’ve covered Kevin McCarthy for a long time. Can you sort of unpack this for us? What went into this decision, and what are the implications on the Hill and beyond in the Republican Party right now?
MR. KANE: Yeah. Well, it’s a 17-year arc for a guy who arrived in in the Capitol, kind of already knowing where everything worked, because he had served as a top aide to Bill Thomas, who was a legendary member in the eighties, nineties, and early aughts, who had chaired the Ways and Means Committee. McCarthy showed up when Republicans were in their just terrible, terrible state in 2007, ‘8, ‘9, and ’10, where they were deep, deep in the minority, and he was a guy who was already plotting how to sort of help the party rebound, help them find their way, and get back into the majority.
And he himself was already plotting how to become Speaker. You know, he really always wanted this job. It took a lot of twists and turns and starts and false starts and in and out of top leadership positions, but he got there finally in January after that marathon vote. It took 15 public roll call votes in order for enough Republicans to side with him, and he proclaimed that as a strength, that it showed that he was a guy who was always going to fight and he was never going to quit. That was his mantra: “I won’t quit.”
Well, nine months later, a group of Republicans rebelled against him, tossed him out as Speaker using a really bizarre, never-before-used procedure in order to expel a sitting House Speaker, sort of like a vote of no confidence, and he has spent the last two months, McCarthy, basically just kind of walking around being quite bitter, always talking about the “crazy eights,” he calls them, the eight people who kicked him out.
And look, he doesn’t serve on any committees. He doesn’t have that role anymore. He has a small office on the first floor of the Capitol, and he decided that it’s really not all worth it to continue being a member in a place that kind of rejected him, that expelled him.
Nancy Pelosi is deciding to stick around because she didn’t really face that type of revolt, and she is sort of living her best life in the post-speakership world. McCarthy was kind of living his worst life and decided it’s time to go.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, it’s a great point about the contrast between Pelosi and McCarthy.
And PK, you mentioned the small group of Republicans who are basically responsible for ousting him in this pretty extraordinary way from the speakership. What does his sort of departure mean or say about this Republican conference at this point in time and the Republican Party more broadly? And I also want to ask you, what, if any, implications you think there are for 2024 here in the election, given that McCarthy did have this sort of vaunted, you know, fundraising apparatus that I think a lot of House Republicans relied on in prior cycles?
MR. KANE: Well, let’s just start with the basic numbers. When the elections ended a year ago, there were 222 House Republicans, 213 Democrats. There have been a series of deaths and resignations and one expulsion, of George Santos, and so once McCarthy leaves, possibly, you know, the end of this week or early next week, you’ll be down to 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats. So on any given vote, the new Speaker, Mike Johnson, can only afford to lose two people from his side–oh, wait. Let’s do the math again, 220, 213. He can afford to lose three. I got it wrong. I got it wrong. So he can afford to lose three and pass, by one vote, a partisan bill. You know, but now there’s a Santos special election coming up, and Democrats could win that. And if they win that, because the old incumbent is a Democrat–he’s running again, Tom Suozzi–now you’re a 220, 214, and a tie vote is essentially a failed vote. So Speaker Johnson would only have two votes there.
All this happens as McCarthy, who has been the sort of top recruiter–he’s been a big-time fundraiser for many years, especially the past five as the Republican leader and Speaker–he won’t be there. He’ll not be out there raising money.
Mike Johnson, who was really sort of a backbencher, pulled from almost nowhere, very, very, very, very junior leadership position, used to raise about a million dollars every two years for his own reelections. And that’s the sort of stuff that Kevin McCarthy, he was raising once a week in an election season. So he has to really step up his game. Now, the ultimate thing House Republicans right now is that they rely heavily on their super PAC, which is funded by about 15 or 20 mega-rich conservative families, people worth nine figures, billionaires and such. Those people are still most likely going to be in the game, and they are still–they are real ideologues. They’re sharp conservatives. So they will probably continue to write checks that will help fund the campaigns at the very end.
Now, what will really be a test for Republicans is raising money for the individual candidates and how they do in those campaigns and how they’re able to raise money, and McCarthy used to be quite helpful at that with his connections to sort of downtown D.C., the lobbying firms, trade associations, et cetera. They’re called “hard dollars,” those limited amounts that candidates can raise into their–directly into their campaigns. They’re the most precious dollars, and Democrats have done much, much better than Republicans in the last five years or so at those particular type of fundraising dollars. And now without McCarthy, it could be an even bigger edge for Democrats.
MR. SULLIVAN: That’s really fascinating, something to watch next year.
PK, you had this great story over the weekend that I got to bring up about Liz Cheney who is another fascinating figure in politics right now, one of the most outspoken critics of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. So what is Liz Cheney up to in 2024? What is she trying to do?
MR. KANE: You know, she helped–she essentially gave up a career that seemed to be on the rise about three years ago after the Capitol attack and, you know, made her mantra. Her focus was on going after Trump, who she believed, you know, had completely subjugated democracy and in an attempt to overthrow a legitimate election that Joe Biden clearly won, and that made her persona non grata among House Republicans.
She had already risen up to the number three leadership position just under McCarthy and Steve Scalise, and then they kicked her out a few months later. And then she lost her primary in August of 2022. So she’s freed from the sort of the bonds of Congress, and a lot of people have been wondering, is she going to run for president? She’s stoked some–a lot of interest by saying she might run a third-party contest. She’s not really happy where Biden Democrats are right now.
But deep down, the one thing she’s really committed to is campaigning against House Republicans, her own former caucus where she was a member for six years. She doesn’t believe that they will stand up to Trump. She believes that should–several different possibilities. One, Trump could contest the election if he loses again, and if House Republicans are in the majority, they won’t be able to stand up to him if he truly lost. She also worries that there’s a chance that one of these third-party candidates that are already out there might win a state, might deny Trump and Biden 269–270 electoral votes. That’s the bare minimum to win. And in that case, the election goes to the House of Representatives, and they have to decide who becomes president. And each state gets to cast one vote in which all of their delegation members vote as one, and if you have a majority of Democrats in a state like California, an overwhelming Democratic state, it only counts as one vote. Wyoming, where Liz Cheney represented for six years, counts as one vote, even though they have one member. So she’s very concerned about that makeup in that dynamic, and she wants to sort of target quite a few races in which the state delegations might also be tipped as a way to sort of deny Trump a path back to power in that way, that fashion.
MR. SULLIVAN: That’s really interesting.
Last thing I want to ask you, PK–I’ve got about a minute left here–is about this talk on Capitol Hill that House Republicans have–some House Republicans have been engaged in about opening an impeachment inquiry against the current president, President Biden. Where does that stand? What is their basis for this, and where do you see that going here in the final weeks of the year?
MR. KANE: Sure. Later this week, possibly as their final legislative action of this year, this calendar year, House Republicans are going to put a–plan to put a vote on the floor to formally launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. This is all focused on what have all been well-written, well-documented stories about Hunter Biden and his work on behalf of Ukrainian interests and Chinese interests back when Joe Biden was the vice president and his post-vice presidency career.
We have written many, many, many stories about this at The Washington Post. It was both queasy and ethical forms yet also quite familiar in Washington form of how people try to trade on influence. Hunter Biden was doing all of this while he was also going through serious addiction battles and was burning through lots of money.
Republicans have been trying to figure out whether or not there was any benefit, personal benefit that went from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden. So far, there’s no real documentation of all of that.
Last week, they put up documented emails that showed something like $1,300, but it was to pay the father back for loaning money to help him buy a very expensive Jeep-like car.
Anyway, they’re going to make this vote, and it will almost certainly pass, because at this point, they feel the White House is kind of blocking them, and they’re going to need to go to court in order to try and force the White House to compel more testimony.
And there is this long-running theory of the case that if you have a formal inquiry and there is a House vote, that the courts will give it a higher weight, and they might side with the House in these votes. That’s what they’re saying they’re going to do. We’ll see how long this this process lasts. There’s a decent chance that they could try to move toward impeachment early next year and really go around the whole court process anyway. So it’s not going to really advance the ball too much, except it will put on record that they are voting to start an impeachment inquiry, which is a little bit of a dicey position for some of those Republicans sitting in districts that Joe Biden won.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. It will be interesting to see how those vulnerable Republicans respond.
Lots to unpack both on and off Capitol Hill. We’ll have to leave it right there for now, but Paul Kane, senior congressional correspondent, thank you so much for joining us.
MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. I want to continue the program now with two of our campaign reporters, Colby Itkowitz and Meryl Kornfield, to talk about 2024. Welcome to both of you to the program.
MS. ITKOWITZ: Thanks, John.
MS. KORNFIELD: Thanks, John.
MR. SULLIVAN: So, Colby, I want to start with you and the big news in the Republican presidential race today is this new Iowa poll that’s very respected, Des Moines Register poll, that Republican strategists and observers have looked to for a long time as sort of a gauge of where the race stands in Iowa. What does this poll show us now with I think exactly five weeks to go until the caucus is–not that I’m keeping track or counting down the days myself, but what are we seeing, Colby, in this latest poll?
MS. ITKOWITZ: I mean, it’s stunning, Sean. Trump captures 51 percent of the vote in this poll, which is historic. That has never been true in a caucus poll in Iowa before, and it shows that he just has a commanding hold on the primary, namely in Iowa but across the country as well. DeSantis and Hallie [sic], who have been duking it out for second place, come a distant–I think it’s 19 percent for DeSantis and 16 percent for Hallie, and so–“Haley,” rather. I’m sorry. My niece’s name is Hallie, and I do that all the time. [Laughs]
But so, yeah, Trump is the formidable frontrunner going into the caucuses in five weeks, and it’s going to be really, really difficult for anyone to catch up. And if he ends up securing 51 percent or higher of the vote in Iowa, there doesn’t seem like there’s a chance that anyone’s going to be able to surpass him in later states.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. You mentioned the other candidates trying to catch him, and they’ve been debating. So I wanted to stick with that, Colby. You were at the debate last week that Donald Trump did not participate in. We did see Nikki Haley, one of the candidates in the mix that you mentioned, become sort of a target of criticism from some of her rivals in that debate, including Ron DeSantis. What did you make of that and the fact that she’s sort of emerging as a target for criticism from her Republican rivals right now?
MS. ITKOWITZ: Again, the primary outside of President Trump really feels like it’s a race for second place, like I said, and it’s really between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. So they came out fighting. They wanted to put Nikki on her heels, and she–you know, she really held her own. She’s pretty unflappable. She had this great line in the beginning when Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy were attacking her, where she said, “I love all the attention, fellas.” So she was really calm.
There was a moment where Vivek holds up a sign in capital–big capital letters, he’d scrawled, “Nikki Equals Corrupt” on a piece of paper. When asked if she wanted to respond, she said that it didn’t warrant or he didn’t–it wasn’t worth her time to respond to him.
Ron DeSantis was also trying to get in on the corrupt thing, that she’s owned by Wall Street donors. Her retort back to him was something to the effect of “you’re just jealous because those donors used to support you and now they support me.”
So she had a really, really strong debate last week. She came out again poised, confident, knowledgeable on the issues, and she was able to withstand all of those attacks coming at her from all sides.
That being said, it’s hard to imagine that she could surpass President Trump at this point. We might see her ending up to be the second place, the runner-up. Maybe that puts her in line as a potential vice presidential candidate on the ticket, but again, unlikely that she can surpass Trump at this point.
MR. SULLIVAN: And, Meryl, you covered the debate for us as well in real time, had some great insights, and so I wonder, you know, when you look at these debates, there hasn’t been a single one with Donald Trump. He’s not given any indication that he wants to debate his rivals at all, doesn’t seem to have paid any price at all in the polls. You’ve also been out around the country a lot. You’ve talked to a lot of Republican voters. What has the impact been of the leading polling–you know, the clear polling leader skipping these debates, both in this race, and what do you–what’s the impact been in the minds of Republican voters, do you think?
MS. KORNFIELD: A lot of voters I’ve talked to, especially in recent weeks, have kind of checked out, if they were even checked into this race, and they’ve said that they weren’t paying attention. I talked with a lot of voters during the debate. I was texting with voters and asking them are they watching, and a lot of people were doing other things. And, you know, we saw that in the audience viewership for this debate was lower than other ones.
So I think in this case, a lot of the Republican voters that I’ve talked to, who have said it makes sense that Trump is not participating, were unsurprised by it, and at this point, they see these debates as a race for second.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. So, Meryl, we talked about Donald Trump. We’ve talked about Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are obviously battling for this sort of second place position in Iowa. And then there’s this other candidate, Chris Christie, who is in the race, who was also at the debate, hasn’t shown any signs that he’s dropping out, even though some have pressured him to do so, it appears. So when you look at Christie’s presence in this race right now, what impact could he have, even as a candidate who’s sort of polling in the single digits right now? What effect, if any, is he having on this race as we head into early 2024?
MS. KORNFIELD: Christie sees himself as this anti-Trump voice. He wants to make sure that the other competitors are speaking up against Trump. We saw him do that in the debate when DeSantis didn’t answer a question he was asked about Trump. He said, “Wait, wait, wait. You didn’t answer that,” and kept going after DeSantis for not talking about would he support Trump. And that’s something that he is going to continue to do on the trail.
We see him at his town hall events talking about how there needs to be that voice in the Republican Party and he can be that, and that appeals to a never-Trump Republican audience. There are people who I’ve talked with in New Hampshire who really like him and really like how he’s talking about Trump, and they’re also considering Nikki Haley as another option because they view her as a similar alternative in terms of policy.
MR. SULLIVAN: Interesting.
Okay. Colby, so 35 days until the Iowa caucuses. We’re moving into all Iowa, all the time kind of focus in this race. As you sort of size up this field in the big picture, what should we be watching for in Iowa in this final-stretch run from some of these candidates that we’ve discussed?
MS. ITKOWITZ: Yeah. I’ll be really interested to see how much time President Trump spends in Iowa. He hasn’t participated in any of the debates. He hasn’t really been barnstorming the state the way the other candidates have, and yet he’s captured 51 percent of the vote. And so in some ways, he doesn’t really need to be out there on the ground like these other people do, the foot soldiers, the grassroots efforts. He just needs to be, you know, in the news, in the headlines, and he continues to do that. He says things, as he always has, that, you know, kind of elicit response from other people, and it keeps the focus on him. The more that there are indictments and charges and focusing on his behavior, it seems like the more Republican voters kind of want to rally behind him and support him and feel like he’s getting–that he’s getting targeted.
And so, yeah, I’ll be paying attention to Trump and his visits in Iowa and then also how DeSantis and Nikki Haley, you know, continue to make the argument that they are the better choice than Trump, both better than each other and better than him. It’s a hard sell in Iowa with all the evangelical voters. It’s a really conservative state, and that’s where Trump really shines.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. Let’s drill down on that for a second. You mentioned DeSantis, Colby. I mean, here’s a campaign that has put a lot of its resources into Iowa, has said publicly that it wants to do well in Iowa, but as you pointed out earlier, that poll that came out today shows him well behind Donald Trump. We’ve seen some DeSantis allies try to compare this effort with some of the past caucus winners, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, but he seems to be struggling and continuing to struggle right now. So, you know, what, if anything, could he do to sort of turn this around in these final weeks here in this stretch around Iowa?
MS. ITKOWITZ: Well, it’s interesting, Sean, that you mentioned Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz. Rick Santorum also won Iowa in 2012. None of those men became president. So winning Iowa doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to go on to the White House.
That being said, it does not look like Ron DeSantis has been able to gain the ground that people thought he was going to when this primary got started. He was the guy to beat. He was the guy to–you know, the next Donald Trump. People were really excited about the things that he did in Florida during covid, and he has not been able to translate that on a national stage.
And you talk to some political consultants and they just say he maybe wasn’t ready for primetime; he wasn’t ready for the scrutiny and the focus that comes with running a national campaign. And no matter how hard his allies and his people have tried, again, endorsements for him, nothing has seemed to really allow him to gain the traction needed to surpass Donald Trump.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. And the expectations were really high for him, as I remember earlier this year.
So I want to turn over, Meryl, to the Democratic primary right now, which is also ongoing, and you had a great story over the weekend about what’s going on there. Dean Phillips, who is this long-shot challenger against Joe Biden, the president, has been stepping up some of his attacks and stepping them up in a way that seems to have angered some Biden allies who see what he’s doing is dangerous. So I wonder if you could unpack all of that for us and what you found in your reporting. Who is Dean Phillips? What is he doing, and why is it that we’re seeing such a sharp reaction to some of these attacks from Biden’s allies?
MS. KORNFIELD: Dean Phillips, who is well known in Minneapolis where his suburban congressional district is but lesser known around the country, has made a name for himself in recent weeks for challenging Biden and saying that there should be this alternative in the Democratic Party. He is not someone who has had as long of a career in the Democratic politics as Joe Biden has. He jokes like, “The other guy is 50 years ahead of me,” because he won his district in 2018. Before that, he was a businessman. He’s well known for running Talenti Gelato and his family having a successful distillery business, and he is now trying to better understand the New Hampshire primary trail. And he is using this one specific point to try to rally the Democratic base there saying that you have been disenfranchised by Joe Biden.
He is not on the ballot here. Phillips alleges that the DNC is not going to see New Hampshire delegates, which remains to be seen, and he said because of that, your vote will not be counted. So this is someone who is threatening democracy.
And what we heard from Democrats nationally was they were frustrated with Phillips using that language. That’s language that Trump has used against Biden, and they compared him to Trump for that reason.
And what I heard when I talked with New Hampshire voters is they don’t fully understand the argument that Phillips is trying to make, and they also said that they don’t feel like Biden is this threat to democracy in the same way that Trump is, and that we should be focusing on someone who’s saying that he’s going to be a dictator on day one, and that voters generally, while they are frustrated with how the New Hampshire, first in the nation, primary has been handled, something that they’ve prided a long time, but now South Carolina is ahead of them, that they feel like that this point that Phillips is drilling into doesn’t distinguish him enough from Biden.
MR. SULLIVAN: So, Meryl, we have President Biden on one side with a commanding lead in the Democratic primary. We have Donald Trump, the former president, on the other side which, as we’ve discussed, has a commanding lead in the Republican primary. You’ve been out talking to voters a lot all around the country. Is there an appetite among them for a candidate who is not named Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Is there an appetite for some sort of alternative, some third-party candidate, or are you not really sensing that right now?
MS. KORNFIELD: You sense that when I ask people, who are you going to vote for if it’s a Biden-Trump matchup again. Like, what I immediately hear is a long sigh, because people don’t want to have to answer that question again.
And what Phillips points to is polling shows that in a head-to-head, Trump wins against Biden in battleground states, but if there’s this generic Democrat, then people like that, and they’re more likely to vote for the generic Democrat. But the problem with that is he isn’t a generic Democrat in the sense that he is an actual politician who is running and has a background and can say things, and then as soon as he is a name and a known quantity, he becomes less generic and potentially less likely for people to support. It remains to be seen.
But what we know right now about New Hampshire is Biden is leading, even as a write-in candidate, and is likely to be the Democratic nominee if that continues. So that’s where Phillips sees an opening.
MR. SULLIVAN: Interesting.
And, Colby, we’ve talked on this program a lot about the legal problems that president–former president Trump is confronting, four criminal indictments, 91 charges spanning those indictments, a series of trials potentially going into next year and potentially beyond. But on the other side, you have a lot of Republicans pointing to some of the potential legal entanglements of President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and they are pointing to this a lot in their efforts to raise this as an issue in the campaign. So how do you see Hunter Biden sort of factoring into the 2024 election and 2024 campaign?
MS. ITKOWITZ: Yeah. You know, it puts a real personal and political strain on President Biden. This is his son, who he loves dearly, doesn’t want to see him getting in trouble, doesn’t want to see him in the spotlight for these negative reasons. And so you have to imagine that that weighs on the president heavily.
But it also–there’s a political cost because the Democrats want to be able to point to Donald Trump and all of his legal entanglements and say that he’s unpresidential, but the Republicans have this ability now, right or wrong, to try and equate Trump’s legal troubles with Biden’s family issues, with Hunter’s legal problems, and so there seems to be–you know, it kind of takes the wind out of the Democrats a little bit, their ability to focus on Trump’s crimes.
What Democrats will say in response to that is that one major thing, difference that we’re talking about, the candidate himself, President Trump, versus a family member of the candidate. Hunter Biden is not running for president. He is the son of the president, and so far, there’s been nothing proven that the president has done anything wrong, that he has been involved in any of the illegal issues that Hunter finds himself in. So the narrative isn’t great. The strain on the president isn’t great for him, but Democrats are just going to keep homing in on the fact that this is not–you cannot equate these two things. You cannot equate 91 charges against the former president and all of his various indictments and legal entanglements with what the current president’s son is going through.
MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. We’ve talked a lot about the candidates. Real quick, I want to ask both of you, starting with you, Meryl, about issues. When you talk to voters, both Democrats and Republicans, out across the country, what are the issues that matter, either policy issues or political issues that are standing out in some of the interviews that you’re doing? What’s on the minds of America right now as we head into this election year?
MS. KORNFIELD: I’ve talked with Republican voters in Iowa and specifically asked what are the top issues that they’re voting on, and I hear a lot, immigration. They see these images on conservative news sites about people crossing the border, and they feel threatened by that.
Another big issue I hear is economy. They feel, like, the growing inflation in their pocketbook. I was standing outside grocery stores in Minneapolis last week, and that was something I heard again and again, as people pointed to their groceries and pointed out, “Well, this is what I used to pay for this, and this is now what I pay for it. And I can really feel a difference.”
And something I hear a lot from Democrats is also that concern about inflation, that they feel the difference, and they will say, “I know that the economy is better, but I don’t see it firsthand. My real wages are not where I want them to be.”
And another thing I hear a lot from them is concern about Trump and democracy in the future of a potential general and how Biden might handle facing off against Trump again.
MR. SULLIVAN: Colby, I’ll give you the last word on this. What are you hearing out there?
MS. ITKOWITZ: Yeah, I agree. Economy is always at the top of voters’ minds. You know, some voters are frustrated that the Biden White House continues to point to how well the economy is bouncing back, but like Meryl said, people don’t feel that. They don’t feel that in their own pocketbooks. They don’t feel that in their paychecks. When they go grocery shopping, prices still feel high.
And they–you know, President Trump is really trying to use that to say, “Listen, things were better economically when I was president. So you should put me back in the White House, and things will be better again.”
President Biden is trying to say, “Listen, he’s the one that messed everything up, you know, and the reason why we have these problems at the end of his presidential term.”
So you’re going to hear them really try to make the case for why the other is bad for the economy, and I think at the end of the day, voters are going to be voting based on how they feel the economy is doing personally for them.
MR. SULLIVAN: Lots to watch in the year ahead. Unfortunately, we are out of time, so we’ll have to leave it there. Colby Itkowitz, Meryl Kornfield, thank you both so much for joining us today.
MS. KORNFIELD: Thanks, Sean.
MS. ITKOWITZ: Thanks, Sean.
MR. SULLIVAN: And thanks to all of you for joining us. For more information on upcoming events and interviews that we have in the works, please go to WashingtonPostLive.com. Thank you again for joining us today. I’m Sean Sullivan, and we’ll see you next time.
