How might he react to it? Trump TV, not doing so well.

no i mean there should be some kind of camera on this i mean this is a big enough deal i mean internationally if nothing else where this will get out photos will get out and if news is is made we're certainly going to hear about it but this also does in some ways um make a statement about you know maybe the news media um clawing back a little bit at if not control of of the process of covering the White House.

I mean, at least sort of having some self-respect here and not letting Trump manipulate this as he would.

But listen, I don't think Republicans can bank on the idea that The president will be silenced in a significant way for a long period of time.

I mean, I think the onus is on them, and it's probably too late at this point to distance himself from him if they disagree with him on things.

And they've chosen not to do that.

So I think that that guy will be cast in November and they're going to have to pay the price for it.

Those aren't people who voted for him not years ago.

Yeah, I mean, it does seem like, well, first of all, the coalition does seem to be seriously broken.

I mean, what I'm curious about is, one, is he going to course correct upon hearing this? I'm saying unlikely.

I think more likely he will attack her.

I mean, it hasn't happened yet, but I wouldn't would not at all surprise me is if in the next 24, 48 hours he puts out some truth to social statement calling her an ingrate or something.

And then we have a whole new feud to watch and everything.

He doesn't take well to this kind of stuff.

That's been his message until this point.

And by we're all going to be rich, it does seem the president's talking about himself and his friends.

Yeah, I mean, he certainly I mean, that is his posture here.

He feels and he said this explicitly the other day that all we need is a smart president to corral all this and to sort of make it all happen, which I don't think anyone's buying.

I mean, I think he's got a americans feeling that they have been they're just having things thrown at them that they don't want and i think ai and and you know in the community data centers are kind of like the tip of the spear at this point and i don't know if trump sort of missing this moment is is that glaring in that i mean he has missed many many moments in this second administration whether it's over costs and inflation and the war and so forth.

I mean, he does not, whatever ear to the ground he had, whatever sort of intuitive sense he had of where the electorate is and where his people are from his first term seems long gone.

And what I also think is kind of interesting here, especially from that clip that we saw from the all-in conference, was that Jensen Huang seemed to be like shaking his head while he was listening to this.

which was an interesting visual.

Mark, do you think this is going to be the defining issue, if not in some races that we're seeing, like the Texas race, but for 2028?

So which which camp is right?

I would say that the Cruz, Rove, Thune camp is right.

I mean, that's pretty jarring candor from Republicans there.

I mean, those three in particular, because, you know, usually happy talk is sort of the way into these things.

I mean, the default is usually, yeah, we're going to win.

We're going to do well.

I'm not worried about the polls, blah, blah, blah.

What do you make of this strategy?

How about you?

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that that's what he's focused on.

I mean, I do think there's a real danger here, though, that this is a distraction from the ballroom and the reflecting pool.

So you didn't even mention either of those things in your list there, Steph.

So, I mean, we have to keep track of what we care about here.

I mean, I do think, look, it's gotten really absurd.

I think what's interesting about the triumphal arc is you have... you know, first of all, you have the terrible visual of the entire east wing of the White House being torn up.

How does any of this make any sense?

But Mark, why might the mere mention of Harp get under Trump's skin?

I mean, I have a feeling, I mean, my feeling is the Ossoff thing obviously got a lot of attention.

I think this would have been there anyway.

I mean, there was a lot of talk of Natalie Harp going into John Ossoff's mention of it.

I mean, it was a big part of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's book.

There were some leaks of some notes that she had written to him.

So that's sort of been out there.

Which CHUP candidates are likely first to get some financial help?

Could be.

Uh, look, th- there, there has always been [clears throat] a double standard in politics.

I mean, there's selective outrage.

It's sort of part of what goes on here.

The orders of magnitude of difference here are just so stunning.

And, and I do sort of disagree with the idea that it's a numbing effect, because I do think that people are collectively aware of it, and it could be an anything but numb response at the ballot box in November.

I, I think...

So if you are the DNC right now watching Mara's interviews in the State of Georgia, you're thinking what?

So, Lebo, does that still hold true?

Oh, absolutely.

No, I mean, trying to figure out, you know, some kind of coherence to this is like trying to figure out, you know, 10 fireflies beeping randomly in a jar or something like that.

I mean, this is all very much, it seems at least, on the whims of one person.

That's sort of how this whole administration has run.

And look, when you sort of...

There's the baseline unpopularity of the war.

It is something that is now very much a hot issue, a hot potato, if you will, for the midterms, which, you know, what are they, two months away now? Mm-hmm.

So what does all of this say about the president's leverage on Capitol Hill?

Well, I mean, it says a few things.

I mean, first of all, I mean, yes, I mean, this is the, uh, YOLO caucus, meaning, you know, they don't have anything to really, uh, you know, think about reelection-wise because Trump has already, uh, in his own way kind of undermined all of them.

Um, but as, as we've learned from John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, there are ways to get these folks on the team and get them back on board.

I mean, in some ways Murkowski and Collins were ...

Certainly there's nothing safe about them, but I think Democrats would have probably pointed to them as being the two most likely no votes, and then it all comes down to Cassidy unless, um, as Jake mentioned, McConnell somehow becomes ambulatory enough to, to come to the floor and vote for, um, Blanche.

But, you know, it's unclear what McConnell would even do if he got that far.

How will all of that go over with his base, but more importantly, how will it go over with the coalition that was so critical to getting him elected in '24? Is that coalition disintegrating?

Have these defectors, though, and the fact that everybody's responding to them, have they touched some kind of nerve?

Well, I mean, I do think practically speaking, I mean, as people have mentioned, I mean, third party movements or attempts to start new parties have just been I mean, they fail pretty much every time.

The two party system in this country is very durable, very powerful for all the reasons that we've talked about here.

But I wouldn't understate the.

I wouldn't say power, but certainly this group of people, I think, is emblematic of a fairly large swath of the electorate that's quite disenchanted with Donald Trump.

I mean, you're all sort of former Trumpers, right? And these are people who stand for, you know, no foreign wars.

A lot of the things that Donald Trump has said.

Is there a danger that this kind of ideology, whether they get any kind of third party together, any kind of power, whether that ideology does permit permeate with the actual heir parents in the MAGA world?

They're not trying to deal with affordability, but rather just monuments in Washington or, or things to im- enrich himself or his friends, and we're seeing him lash out, and that's just reinforcing the idea, and polls reflect it, Americans think he simply is out of touch and doesn't care about what they're going through.

I mean, I think it, in many ways, that was reflected in, in the remarks that, that were played earlier.

I mean, he, he seems like he's mailing it in a little bit.

I mean, I think the whole Red Scare thing sort of conjures the idea, certainly the '50s.

It's like, okay, when...

You, people have asked sort of rhetorically over the last several years, uh, "Okay, so let's make America great again.

When was this mythical America that Donald Trump always talks about?" I mean, I guess there's sort of this rough idea that it was around maybe the '40s and '50s or something.

A- and it seems like the President of the United States, frankly, isn't interested in helping.

Um, what struck you while you were watching?

Um, it was, it was one of those kind of old school bipartisan ...

I mean, a lot of people from around the world came in.

I mean, it was definitely a big event.

Um, I, I learned a lot just from watching body language, uh, which is always fascinating at these things, especially between the presidents.

There was, seemed to be a moment between Netanyahu and Zelensky at one point.

Um, you know, you never, you never really know what Trump's gonna do, especially when he's one of the speakers.

What will be some of Graham's lasting images, his legacy to you?

Well, I mean, first of all, it is pretty telling that right after the president of the United States himself and Sean Hannity himself goes up and eulogizes sort of after the president sort of underscores Lindsey Graham's, I would say, appreciation for the green room, for being a citizen of like primetime cable.

And he recognized that this was sort of where certainly where the president of the United States currently was.

gets a lot of his information.

He was very attuned to the audience of one.

So I think it's sort of fitting and telling that Hannity would be there.

But I also think, look, Lindsey Graham was very much a creature of Washington.

But that is part, for all of his maneuvering and all his shape-shifting, a consistency for Graham was the muscular use of the American military abroad.

I imagine they've gotta vet the hell out of you to be an astronaut and entrust you with that kind of responsibility.

Yeah, I, I mean, I was thinking, I mean, as I heard that, I mean, I think Kelly is, on one hand, I mean, it, again, it's preposterous to think that- That, you know, a, a presidential candidate would have to be ambivalent about the military service of a running mate.

I mean, that is a incredibly, you know, great credential to have if in fact, you know, you've, you've been as decorated as Mark Kelly was.

But I also think that his pivot and his rush to sort of make this a point of comparison to his current predicament with, with the administration, uh, is telling in that, uh, he's in this lawsuit against Pete Heg- Pete Hegseth has tried to, uh, lower Mark Kelly's, uh, rank and demote him and lower his pension and, um, and censored him for, for basically these innocuous remarks that, that Kelly and a bunch of his colleagues made reminding service members that they are, they are bound to disobey illegal orders from superiors.

Um, you know, there was this big kerfuffle, Trump tweet socialed about them, calling for their execution and so forth.

Um, but, but, but Kelly's really leaning into this dispute.

He wants to be seen as a foil to Pete Hegseth.

Why, for you of all people, was this so unusual?

And it seems like you were a bit taken by Senator Kelly.

Yeah, I mean, what was interesting about this piece is that it's sort of a portrait of a couple, him and Gabby Giffords, his wife, a former congresswoman who was nearly assassinated, as you mentioned, in 2011.

They've been sort of this backdrop to a lot of political stories over the years, but I've never actually talked to them together and spent time around them together, and I had the opportunity to do so for this.

And it's unlike anything I'd ever seen.

I mean, they I mean, Gabby Giffords was sort of a born politician.

Mark Kelly is an engineer.

He's an astronaut.

But you talk in your piece about how to him danger is relative.

Could you argue that the track record of Trump and the legacy of Trump is what allowed Platner to survive as long as he did?

Possibly.

I think he, he kind of widened the lens of what certainly people were willing to tolerate, I think also in what Democrats were looking for.

I mean, he became kind of a cartoonish version of what a working-class Democrat could possibly look like, um, in the end.

But, you know, it almost worked.

I mean, if, if this reporting hadn't come out, if this political report hadn't come out, he would have made it to the finish line or to whatever deadline it was he needed to make, and we'd be having this conversation non-hypothetically.

So...

You've got the, um, "I'm different from Donald Trump." You also have Gavin Newsom a little bit, you know, he doesn't say this, "I'm a little bit like Donald Trump." Which is the argument that as you cover these things is gonna gain traction in your estimation?

Mark, how did we get here?

How did we get here? Well, I would...

Humbly put put some of the blame on Donald Trump because conspiracy theories have never been more rampant.

I mean, it sort of merges perfectly with social media, the Internet and a lot of people that advise him, whether it's Laura Loomer or whether it's any number of people in the MAGA media world.

Of course, no one can just die anymore.

I mean, whether it's Lindsey Graham or, you know, around Mitch McConnell's sort of recent illness, there was all the speculation around keeping him alive or not and so forth.

No election is on the up and up, you know, go down the list.

So when is McConnell coming back? Why don't we have a better picture of that, Mark?

Yeah

... instance in which, um, you know, bipartisanship works, um, you know, Congress works.

I mean, this is a, by u- by many accounts, a, a very solid piece of legislation, and it, it's not like President Trump is doing anything to, to knock this down on the merits of the bill or the legislation or even the issue.

I mean, he talked, I guess he wants to raise housing costs.

We heard that.

But I mean, this is just petulance, and it's not gonna work.

I mean, obviously, I mean, he hasn't moved the needle with any voters on, or any, uh, senators on the Save America Act to, to, to this point.

Mark?

If you were going to write me the obit, the profile on the end of Doge, what would it say?

i would blow my deadline so i probably would take me long past you go off the air anyway no what i would say is in the tv version of this is that doge i mean yes it's terminated now it's a year later whatever it's you know this is a whole different era things have moved on but i mean the fact is that you've mentioned this and it's certainly clear to anyone who certainly lives around washington is that the damage to this has been long-term.

This was not just short-term noise, not short-term circus and photo ops that we just saw Elon Musk wielding his chainsaw.

I mean, this is tens of thousands of lives completely upended, many of them you know, we know here or indirectly are affected around government because their grants dried up, because people they work with have been laid off, people overseas and so forth.

And as I mentioned, I mean, overseas, too, is a huge part of this.

A lot of people in very far flung places were deeply affected by this and in a really, really tragic way.

So as many things happen here, I mean, the noise might have subsided, but the ripples are ongoing and certainly the damages also.

Is there anybody in Washington associated with the Republican Party who is saying we need to fix this? Because if they keep it going, there's a worry that millions upon millions of lives could be lost.

Mark, what about you?

Well, I mean, obviously, Colorado, I mean, as soon as you get out of New York, it gets really interesting.

Colorado is an interesting race, but it's also kind of a microcosm in a very blue congressional district where you can sort of see some parallels between what happened there and what happened in some of the New York districts.

I think where it really gets interesting is where you have statewide races like in, say, Michigan, where you have a very progressive state.

candidate who might, you know, looks like he could be the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, big Bernie guy and has a lot of energy behind him on the left.

But he's also the kind of person who can possibly not do well in a general election against Mike Rogers, who's a former Republican congressman who is actually not as Trumpy as a lot of other R's on the ballot this year.

So Look, I think Michigan, a purple environment, Maine, certainly.

Mark, what about you?

What is your reaction to hearing the president say he has not learned his lesson yet when it comes to limits on his power? And do you agree with Senator Booker's claim there that Republicans in Congress are responsible for allowing Trump so much power?

Yeah, I mean, two things.

I mean, first of all, it was kind of this great little Trumpian exchange there because, you know, there are no limits on my power.

I know they are there, but I haven't learned the lesson yet.

I mean, what is that supposed to mean? He obviously knows that there are supposed to be limits.

He's not following it.

And that gets to what Senator Booker said and basically the whole lack of oversight that Trump has enjoyed.

How much longer can Trump test the patience of his own party, especially with the midterms approaching?

He's not qualified." And now people on both sides of the aisle are like, "Please, when can we [laughs] get Jay Clayton in this job?" What should we take away from all of this?

Well, I mean, it seems like Trump's objective here is twofold.

One, he just seems to really get off on, on, on just sh- exerting power and humiliating, uh, Senate Republicans.

Just saying, "You know what? You want this? I'm gonna give you this, and I'm gonna mess up everything, and, um, you know, just let, let's watch the chaos play out." The other thing is you have to wonder, I mean, Pul- Pulte's obviously not a long-term, um, solution to this, but he just seems to be buying him a little bit of time so that he can sort of come in, um, and just freak everybody out, gather names.

I mean, I don't know how much damage he can actually do in the period of time he's gonna be serving.

But Trump seems to say, like, "Look, you know, go in.

You have the in for as much time as you, uh, we can give you.

Given that, Mark, you think JD Vance, you think these meetings could be back on? This thing is fluid.

What will you be looking for today?

Well, I mean, it- it's, basically it's a kind of a barometer of Trump's hold or maybe sort of loosening hold on the Republican Party.

I mean, Georgia's always been kind of a, a weird state for him.

If you'll remember in 2020, um, you know, he, he lost the state to, uh, Joe Biden.

It was not expected.

And then, um, you know, it looked like Republicans had held on to the Senate and, but you had this runoff coming, um, later in the year, or early in January.

It was actually the day before January 6th.

You know, maybe he's not as buzzy, yet anyway, as Ossoff," but he's also delivered some really powerful speeches in the Senate about voting rights and the like, that both of them seem like they're on the rise.

it should be, I guess, not surprising that Gavin Newsom would pop up here or even his wife.

No, I mean, I'm surprised it's taken this long.

I mean, this is kind of a more sort of Justice Department focused attack on him.

And, you know, the kind of abuse he's been ladling out for Newsom and other people for a long time now.

I mean, the question is, is he just doing it just to, you know, chill Newsom, other people who might cross Trump? We've seen that movie before.

But also you have to ask, I mean, this this.

as we've seen, can only benefit Gavin Newsom politically in the Democratic Party.

The corruption stories that are coming out of this White House, Mark, I mean, there's a new version of the way that Donald Trump is self-dealing every other day.

so that that brings us to mally mcmorrow who is what is she a state senator

yeah she's in the legislature now she's very impressive i think i think she's kind of like the the compromise candidate i mean she's kind of between stevens and el sayid you know she's she had a few viral moments um you know speeches she gave in in the legislature has had some good ads um doesn't seem to have really caught fire i mean the three of them are pretty bunched and the problem there is one the republican mike rogers is not um i mean he's somewhat acceptable he's not He barely lost, right? He barely lost last time.

He is very, you know, he can very much play a mainstream Republican because that's what he was for many years in Congress, pretty well known around the state.

And it's not at all a sure thing that El-Said supporters will vote for, you know, a non-El-Said nominee and vice versa with Hallie Stevens.

You know, the divide between certainly the Israel campaign uh the you know people who were that's

I thought it was a pretty powerful speech.

He's a talented guy.

I mean, he's a very talented politician.