Top House Republicans are crafting a strategy to pummel Joe Biden and his Cabinet with investigations — and potential impeachments — next year after winning the majority.
Their right flank may yet wreck the whole plan.
Members of GOP leadership and committee chairs-in-waiting are months into the coordination of headline-grabbing probes to launch should they flip the House this fall, as is likely. At the same time, neither those Republicans nor Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are publicly weighing in on the possibility of a Biden impeachment — which would consume the country and trigger a backlash with unpredictable fallout for the party.
“I think that’s a question for the conference,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who typically doesn't shy away from rhetorical bomb-throwing and just last year called for the president to resign, said of impeaching Biden in the next Congress.
Talk like that is doing little to prevent some of the conference's biggest Trump acolytes from charging ahead with early vows to file impeachment articles even if it risks muddying the party’s messaging. It’s hardly the first time some members have zigged while their colleagues zag, but the rhetorical dissonance comes as party leaders are pressing for unity ahead of November.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other firebrands have left a trail of breadcrumbs, filing 14 impeachment resolutions since early 2021 that signpost conservatives’ biggest targets if Republicans flip the House. Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland are at the top of the list.
Asked about impeaching Biden, Greene said that “I think that my colleagues will move to my position because that’s how their voters feel,” adding that she would “absolutely” be introducing articles next year.
In the president's orbit, Democrats predict that House Republicans are on track for an overreach that will cause them painful blowback in 2024. One senior Democratic aide, addressing McCarthy on condition of anonymity, warned that a narrow GOP majority would embolden his right flank to his peril: “Those members will have his balls in such a vice grip that when they say 'jump', he’ll say 'how high', and it’ll be too late before he realizes the fall will kill them.”
But the calls for caution are also coming from inside the House, where some Republicans warn against getting pulled down a political rabbit hole with no chance of booting Biden from office.
“I hope we don’t" impeach Biden, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said. "I would argue we all know, at the end of the day, there’s not going to be a conviction in the Senate. It just injects poison into the system, causes a lot of turmoil."
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who's expected to lead the Oversight Committee should Republicans take the chamber, demurred recently when asked about a presidential impeachment.
“That will be a decision that Kevin McCarthy will have to make in communication with Jim Jordan,” Comer said.
During a Fox News appearance in August, he forecast that a GOP House would be “eager to try to impeach" Biden.
Asked lately about internal pressure to impeach Biden, however, Comer simply quipped: “I’m not under pressure, because that’s gonna be McCarthy’s job.”
Congressional leaders have typically treated presidential impeachments warily. Trump was only the third president ever impeached by the House. Chatter among Republicans about impeachment during the tea-party-fueled opposition to President Barack Obama never moved forward.
Asked recently about the prospect of impeaching Biden, McCarthy sidestepped: “We just went through four years of watching a political impeachment," he told reporters. "We will uphold the law. We will not play politics with it."
Nonetheless, internal party politics are bound to propel a vocal impeachment push if the GOP wins the House next month. Nearly 140 sitting House Republicans supported challenges to Biden’s 2020 victory that were fueled by baseless Trump-backed claims of widespread voter fraud, and still more GOP backers of those unfounded claims are poised to join Congress next year.
But base fervor doesn't quite translate to votes, and impeaching Biden already appears close to out of reach for the House GOP. Of the Biden impeachment resolutions introduced since January 2021, the most support any counts is eight members. While those numbers could grow next year should Republicans take the majority, a broad swath of moderates, more pragmatic-minded members and even old-school conservatives would still need to be swayed.
Republicans view Mayorkas as a more likely impeachment target than Biden himself, though they would still need to convince leadership and moderates to get on board. Notably, McCarthy opened the door during a recent trip to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mayorkas "has not lived up to his oath,” said Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), who demurred when asked about impeaching Biden.
Jordan, whose committee has purview over impeachments, said that the matter was up to members but that Mayorkas "deserves it" given his handling of the southern border. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said he would also file a Mayorkas impeachment resolution next year, predicting “plentiful” support from GOP colleagues.
Democrats have bristled over the GOP attacks against Mayorkas, warning that the party's immigration rhetoric veers toward xenophobic. A person close to the administration accused Republicans of "launching politically motivated publicity stunts" rather than wanting to address border-related challenges.
But impeachment strategy isn't the only oversight schism already cutting through the conference as it tries to lay the groundwork for its first majority since 2018.
Republicans need to decide if they will form a select committee for what would essentially be a Trump-free Jan. 6 investigation, as some have called for. The current Democratic-run Jan. 6 panel will automatically disband in early January, but Republicans could revive it to pursue their own targets, including reviewing the select committee's finances.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally with a penchant for rattling leadership, said he’s had recent conversations with Republicans about the possible idea. But it's also drawing skepticism from senior Republicans and McCarthy hasn’t backed it.
Another option for House Republicans seeking to erase Trump from the narrative of Jan. 6 failures would be using the Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over elections and Capitol security, to launch an investigation next year. Retiring Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, now the panel's top Republican, and aspiring Administration successor Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) have both proposed that idea.
“I don't know why you would need a select committee. The Senate didn't need a select committee to do their job,” Davis said.
Then there's a likely House GOP probe of Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings. Gaetz raised eyebrows within the conference recently by meeting with former Trump White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, who is floating himself as a potential staff director next year for an investigation of the First Son.
Gaetz said he met with Gorka “to discuss general strategy for a Republican expected majority, and I wanted his perspective on whether or not he would advise ... one committee owning the Hunter Biden stuff." The Floridian, who praised Comer's work, said a potential select committee is part of discussions he's having.
Comer, whose panel is expected to take the lead on a probe of the president's son, shot down the notion of a select committee. And if one does take shape, a House Republican who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity said bluntly that Gaetz "will never lead that."
The possible future Oversight chair also counseled his colleagues against letting themselves get pulled into the investigative weeds.
"We’ll request information, we’ll dig, we’ll do anything," Comer said. "But I’m not putting my name on anything that’s not factual.”
Ben Sasse is likely to accept a job as the president of the University of Florida and resign his Senate seat in the near future, according to two people familiar with the Nebraska Republican's plans.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts would then appoint a replacement for Sasse under state law, with the seat then up for a special election in 2024. One of the people familiar with Sasse's plans said Ricketts himself is viewed as a potential appointee for the seat.
The University of Florida confirmed Sasse’s plans in a press release Thursday that announced him as the sole finalist for the position. Given the length of the university’s process, the exact timing of his future resignation is up in the air but likely to happen this year.
Sasse said he and his wife have been “pursued by wonderful institutions the past two years, but we’ve resisted being a finalist. This time is different because the University of Florida is different: I think Florida is the most interesting university in America right now.”
The second-term Sasse made a name for himself as a consistent Donald Trump critic in Congress as well as a reliable conservative vote. Despite his interest in academia, his resignation will be a bit of a surprise after he ran for reelection in 2020 and the potential that he could one day pursue higher office.
Sasse was one of seven GOP senators to vote to convict the former president during Trump's second impeachment trial, after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. His resignation will create a safe GOP seat in a red state; in addition to Ricketts, Nebraska GOP Reps. Don Bacon and Mike Flood may also be in the mix for the appointment.
Ricketts said that Sasse “has one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate, and we need more conservative voices in our universities. Senator Sasse is also incredibly smart and has the experience and a clear passion for higher education.”
As far as a potential self-appointment, Ricketts spokesperson Alex Reuss said that “we aren’t going to speculate at this point. Right now, Senator Sasse is a sitting U.S. senator, and there’s no appointment to be made.”
Sasse has been interested in an academic job for quite some time, according to Republicans familiar with his future plans. Ahead of his 2020 run, there was speculation he would seek an open position to lead the University of Nebraska; prior to running for Senate, he was president of Midland University.
In an interview in February 2021 as his state party prepared to censure him over his impeachment vote (ultimately he got reprimanded), Sasse spoke at length about his views on education — and how he thought the Democrats’ coronavirus aid package missed the mark.
“I can't use the word progressive, I guess, but I care deeply about poverty and about the fact that lower-middle class people are not being well-served by the education establishment, either at K-12 or at the higher-ed level,” Sasse said. “And so you look at this package. Is this really to help poor kids? Hell no.”
In recent years he's maintained a relatively low profile in the Senate, while expressing frustration with the chamber and politics more broadly. Sasse has tried at times to engage his colleagues in debate on the Senate floor, and says that serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee is the best part of his job.
He and his family agonized over whether he should even run for reelection in 2020 after his first full term in the Senate, and "everybody was between 51 percent and 75 percent that we thought this was our calling. So nobody was below 50-50. And yet nobody was like 95 percent.”
“This institution should be a lot more effective than it is. And the only part of every day that's really effective is the Intel work,” he said in the 2021 interview.
In one of Sasse's more high-profile moments this year, he sparred with Sen. Chris Murphy on the floor in March over the Connecticut Democrat's tweet attacking Republicans for criticizing President Joe Biden’s handling of the Ukraine war, while voting against a government spending bill that included aid to Kyiv.
Sasse’s sherpa through the university search process was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff James Uthmeier, who was put in contact with Sasse several months ago after he quietly expressed interest in becoming UF president. Florida’s flagship university enrolls more than 55,000 students.
“He had been sending smoke signals, it was known for a while interest was there,” said a Florida Republican operative familiar with the process. “I’m not sure who got him on touch with James, but once that happened he took it from there.”
Uthmeier declined to comment.
DeSantis has no direct role in the process, but is responsible for appointing the panel that will now give final consideration to hiring Sasse. Sasse was selected as the only finalist after a national search and more than 700 candidates.
The Florida GOP-led Legislature during the 2022 session approved a bill that allows universities in the state to conduct searches for university presidents outside of Florida’s public records and open meetings laws.
In addition to his work on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sasse this year worked with a bipartisan group of senators to reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act, a response to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He is one of the original GOP co-sponsors of the bill.
"Ben is a good and smart and principled person," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). "I can hardly think of an issue on which we agreed but he is someone whom I respect for always standing by the courage of his conviction for always being thoughtful and for standing up for the rule of law."
A member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sasse recently attended Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s investiture ceremony, despite voting against her nomination.
In a statement shortly after, Sasse said he wouldn’t attack the credibility of the court and wished “more of my colleagues would take a similar approach.”
“America doesn’t work when partisans try to burn down our institutions,” he said.
Some details of Sasse’s future were first reported by a former aide, Ian Swanson, who has his own show on 1110 KFAB.
Matt Dixon contributed to this story.
A mayor in upstate New York has accused the Biden administration of conducting seemingly “clandestine” flights of migrant children into the state, with one witness claiming they thought it was “against their will.”
The news comes just weeks after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was accused of “kidnapping” illegal immigrants and sending them to Martha’s Vineyard.
The New York Post reports that at least two flights came from El Paso, Texas and arrived in Montgomery County, New York, and carried dozens of minors between the ages of 13 and 18.
The flights have all the hallmarks of what DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have been accused of by Democrats and the media.
“This seems clandestine,” Montgomery Village Mayor Steve Brescia told the Post.
He also suggested officials were “never informed” about the flights.
“It’s just disturbing we weren’t informed of any of this,” Brescia complained.
At least @JoeBiden didn’t fly them to Martha’s Vineyard…
‘This seems clandestine’: NY mayor rips into Biden after dozens of migrant kids secretly flown to small town https://t.co/CyXRbrifWK via @nypost
— ConservativeNotCrazy (@IAMMGraham) October 6, 2022
RELATED: After Lawsuit Threat, DeSantis Produces Consent Form Used to Fly Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard
The Biden administration’s flights of illegal immigrants across the country have been an open secret for some time. Officials at the White House contend there is nothing clandestine about them or the timing of their arrivals – oftentimes late at night.
The Political Insider reported in June that the Biden administration had increased migrant flights into New York – happening since at least August of 2021 – with an additional airport being utilized to handle the overflow.
A local reporter shared video and captioned it with a disclaimer stating “officials say flights are legal under U.S. immigration law.”
‘SECRET FLIGHTS’ ALLEGEDLY TAPED IN ORANGE COUNTY: Gubernatorial hopeful, Rob Astorino, tweets video allegedly showing ‘secret migrant flights’ at Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, officials say flights are legal under U.S. immigration law. @RobAstorino pic.twitter.com/Gjd1oE9rSa
— Blaise Gomez (@BlaiseGomez12) June 6, 2022
But Brescia’s use of the word ‘clandestine’ seems relevant, especially considering that is the exact phrasing the New York Times used in accusing DeSantis of illegality for the Martha’s Vineyard flights.
“Details have begun to emerge of the clandestine mission that was carried out,” they wrote, referencing “flights paid for with state money in possible violation of the state law that allocated the money.”
One can reasonably assume the Times will not only avoid the word ‘clandestine’ in describing the Biden migrant flights, but they will likely not even cover the story at all.
REPORT: An Upstate #NewYork Mayor Rips Into @JoeBiden After Dozens Of #IllegalAlien Kids Were Secretly Flown To His Small Townhttps://t.co/3G5tbAYizW
— John Basham
(@JohnBasham) October 6, 2022
California Governor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last month requesting the Department of Justice look into “kidnapping” charges for those involved in the effort to send illegal immigrants to Massachusetts.
Several Democrats and media personalities griped that DeSantis did not alert authorities at the flight destination locations and have suggested the illegals were ‘tricked’ into boarding the plane.
And on those counts, the hypocrisy is rich.
Authorities in Montgomery County were allegedly so completely left in the dark about what was happening that somebody noticing “suspicious” activity at the airport and had to alert them to the matter.
The police then had to chase down the buses taking them elsewhere.
“Police quickly intercepted the bus as it left the airport to question the chaperones and migrant kids, who hailed from Honduras, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua,” the Post reports.
New York community burdened by Biden’s secret migrant flights https://t.co/vREyzRk7TM @MorningsMaria @FoxBusiness @MorningsMaria @FoxBusiness
— Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) October 6, 2022
Additionally, the initial call to authorities “stated the witness thought he heard one of the children say they were here against their will.”
It is unclear if these flights followed established protocols for transporting illegal immigrant minors.
Montgomery County’s Deputy Police Chief Paul Arteta said adults accompanied the minors and had the paperwork on their flight plans and destinations – including “a dozen different shelters, children’s homes and ‘vetted sponsors’ across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.”
“Taking them 2,000 or 3,000 miles further away from where they originated is just terrible,” Arteta said. “They knew they were going to be helped in some way but they had absolutely no clue what was going on.”
Republican Representative Claudia Tenney of New York called for President Biden’s impeachment over the illegal immigrant flights into her state earlier this year.
“This is a complete, aggravated dereliction of duty, which is why … I called for Joe Biden to be impeached and removed,” she demanded.
“His primary obligation as the commander-in-chief and president of the United States is to enforce our laws, to live up to his oath, to enforce our border security, and to tell the truth to the American people,” Tenney insisted.
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Tensions flared between Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and swing Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) during then-President Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Winter of 2020, according to an exclusively obtained excerpt from a new book.
New revelations about what McConnell did behind the scenes to help Trump during his first impeachment trial shows the minority leader was one of Trump’s most effective Senate allies before their dramatic falling out after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
They also show that while McConnell is now supporting Murkowski's re-election bid against a Trump-backed challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, just two years ago the two senators were at loggerheads over how to respond to questions about Trump's conduct and fitness for office.
The forthcoming book, “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” reveals that McConnell leaned hard on Murkowski to vote against calling more witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Murkowski at the time said publicly she “was disturbed” by McConnell’s pledge to work in “total coordination” with Trump’s legal team and “take my cues from the president’s lawyers.”
Murkowski saw senators more as members of an impartial jury, not an extension of the defense team, and told a reporter in Alaska shortly before Christmas 2019 that McConnell had “further confused the process.”
Murkowski’s criticism of McConnell started trending on Twitter. When she woke up the next morning after a late night of wrapping Christmas presents at her cabin outside of Anchorage, she found a “snarky” message from McConnell in her email inbox.
It was “a missive that would zap all the holiday cheer out of her for two days. The leader was not happy with her comments. And he wanted to talk to her,” longtime Washington reporters Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian write in “Unchecked,” which will go on sale Oct. 18.
McConnell later tried to mend fences with Murkowski, whom he knew would be a key Republican vote. If she defected, the charges against Trump would have posed a huge political liability for the president and his party heading into the 2020 election.
After returning to Washington after the recess, McConnell summoned Murkowski to walk over to him on the Senate floor and told her: “You and I are on the same page.”
He signaled he didn’t have lingering hard feelings by recalling how in the same interview in which Murkowski criticized him, she also criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for rushing the impeachment investigation.
And he tried to defend his statement that he would coordinate closely with the White House legal team by arguing that Democrats had done the same thing during Bill Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial.
But it still was a sore subject for Murkowski.
“Well don’t advertise it!” she had snapped back.
Bade, the co-author of Politico Playbook, and Demirjian, a member of The Washington Post’s national security team, write that Murkowski also struggled with herself over how to handle the trial, and how to vote on the crucial question of allowing House Democratic prosecutors to call additional witnesses, which would have extended the trial for weeks or even months.
McConnell worked behind the scenes to persuade her not to defect and vote with Democrats.
He knew he couldn’t bully her so he had to use the tactic he had deployed so effectively over his years as leader to convince wayward Republican colleagues to toe the party line.
“McConnell never threatened. He never bullied. And though he often left her space to follow her own intuition, he was an expert at laying the guilt on thick and backing her into a corner,” the authors write.
Murkowski was a critical player in the 2020 impeachment trial because she turned out to be the deciding swing vote on the question of calling more witnesses.
Unlike the vote on convicting the president and removing him from office, which requires two-thirds of the Senate — which was never a real possibility in January of 2020 — the procedural vote on calling more witnesses only needed a simple majority.
Republicans controlled 53 seats, but moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R), who was up for re-election in Maine, a Democratic-leaning state, and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), an outspoken Trump critic, were expected to vote for additional witnesses. If Murkowski joined them, there would be a 50-50 tie on the question and it would have fallen to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to decide or punt on the crucial question.
McConnell knew that Murkowski respected Roberts, who was presiding over the Senate trial, and exploited that to his full advantage. He warned that if she voted with Democrats to call witnesses, Roberts would be thrown into a political maelstrom along with other judges who would be forced to rule on Trump’s legal appeals.
“The most consequential vote during this impeachment is not about whether to convict or acquit,” McConnell told Murkowski carefully, according to the book. “It’s about how to vote on witnesses—and what position that will put the courts in.”
He told Murkowski that it would be up to her to protect the integrity of the judicial branch and stop what he viewed as a politically motivated impeachment trial from damaging the federal judiciary’s reputation as standing above politics.
“If you don’t want to do this for the presidency, if you don’t want to do it for the Senate, if you don’t want to do this for 2020 colleagues, do it to save the courts,” he said.
This and other anecdotes in “Unchecked” are gathered from interviews the authors conducted with the key players in Trump’s impeachment trial. The sources were granted anonymity to protect them from political and personal recriminations.
Though Murkowski was torn over the question of witnesses, she felt sure that Trump had acted improperly by using his power as president to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter on a July phone call.
Yet the Alaska senator thought House Democrats had rushed the impeachment investigation and had dumped an incomplete case in senators’ laps, asking them to finish their work by taking on the burden of fact finding.
Murkowski wondered why the House had not handled the case with more care and concern. She thought that Democrats were just as guilty of playing politics as her Senate Republican colleagues who reflexively circled around Trump to defend him, even though his conduct raised serious ethical and legal questions.
“Republican leaders, much to her frustration, were constantly telling their rank and file: ‘You gotta circle. You gotta circle together and protect one another here’ — which meant, of course, circling to protect Trump. Just like musk ox, Murkowski thought,” imagining the hulking creatures, who circle around their young with their horns turned out and their rears tucked in during times of danger, according to “Unchecked.”
She ultimately decided the House impeachment investigation and Senate trial were flawed, but she felt there wasn’t anything she could do to rectify the situation or alter the outcome that Trump would be acquitted on the final vote.
She and then-Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the other Republican swing vote, ultimately decided they would not support calling new witnesses, putting the trial on the path for a speedy conclusion and giving McConnell the political win he wanted.
As Murkowski deliberated over what to do, she concluded: “Republicans were too afraid to actually check this president, and Democrats didn’t really care about putting him away—just about getting impeachment over with and using it to do maximum damage to the GOP in the 2020 election.”
“Because of that, she thought sourly, Trump would get away with everything. And she had no choice but to be complicit,” the authors write.
Since Jan. 20, 2021, House Republicans have been plotting what they would do after the 2022 midterms, with historical precedent favoring them to retake the House. Their fever dreams are full of impeaching President Joe Biden and anyone and everyone in the cabinet for anything or everything, bogus investigations, and even defunding the FBI.
That’s all ridiculous and time-consuming and really detrimental to the nation, because while they’re doing all that, stuff that needs to be done is being ignored. But a few things they could do—and are already plotting—are downright dangerous. Like potentially refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden unilaterally surrenders to them.
That’s the thing that’s got “GOP leaders, congressional aides and business groups” in a lather, according to Axios, fearing the “nightmare scenario” of a Speaker Kevin McCarthy who has absolutely no control over his caucus of conspiracy theorists. One former GOP House member told Axios that former Republican Speaker John Boehner “was convinced of the necessity [of raising the debt limit] and was willing to twist arms. I just don’t know about a Speaker McCarthy.”
Campaign ActionPart of the problem is that McCarthy is weak; he’s just not up to standing against the dangerous extremists in the GOP caucus. The other problem is that he’s pretty damned dim. It is entirely possible that McCarthy has absolutely no grasp of how things like global financial systems work, and what happens when the biggest player steps out and refuses to pay its debts. Maybe he thinks the catastrophic outcomes have been overstated.
Maybe he thinks it’s just Democratic propaganda, even when it’s explained in very simple, short words. Here’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spelling it out when Republicans were making threats in November 2021:
“In a matter of days, millions of Americans could be strapped for cash. We could see indefinite delays in critical payments. Nearly 50 million seniors could stop receiving Social Security checks for a time. Troops could go unpaid. Millions of families who rely on the monthly child tax credit could see delays. America, in short, would default on its obligations.”
As of now, the next time we bump up against that ceiling looks to be about a year from now, in the fall of 2023. The man who decided back in 2011 that taking the debt ceiling hostage was a good idea is playing coy now, having unleashed that monster on the world. Asked about it by Axios, whether it “will indeed be among the first orders of business he’d raise with a Speaker McCarthy, McConnell smirked.”
The thing about McConnell, though, even then, was that it’s a hostage you can take, one “that’s worth ransoming,” but not one to actually shoot. That’s a distinction that the new order of Republicans, in the thrall of Trump, won’t necessarily make. Or understand. Or care about. But McConnell unleashed this on the nation, and here we are. Even though team McConnell is frantically trying to revise the history.
Rohit Kumar, McConnell’s former deputy chief of staff during the 2011 debt limit fight and now PwC’s national tax services co-leader, countered: “Thinking that you can credibly threaten the full faith and credit of the federal government in exchange for some collateral demand is just wish casting.”
Collateral damage was precisely what McConnell was going for, up to a point. Now that he’s unleashed this thing, he doesn’t have the power to rein it back in. He can talk to McCarthy all he wants about not actually shooting the hostage, but that doesn’t mean it’ll take. Particularly when McConnell’s on the losing side of the GOP civil war, with you-know-who poised to be running for the White House again and agitating against him.
All of which means Democrats have to hold the House. For all sorts of very good reasons, Democrats need to keep the House and Senate both.
It sucks that we have to be the ones to save Kevin McCarthy and the world from Kevin McCarthy, but that’s the way it is.
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