The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 27 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
MAGA’s biggest names are in a fury right now because the Senate parliamentarian has delivered a big blow to GOP hopes of passing President Donald Trump’s big budget bill. Marjorie Taylor Greene unleashed an extraordinary rant on Twitter in which she actually threatened to vote no on his bill because of what the parliamentarian has done to it. All this comes as Trump is getting hit with some of the very worst polling of his second term. We think Trump will probably get his bill in the end, but the bill itself is incredibly unpopular. Trump has caught in this bizarre dynamic in which he badly needs wins, but the wins themselves are only likely to make his standing worse. Today we’re talking about all this with journalist Sarah Posner, who just wrote for Talking Points Memo that the public is souring on just about every one of Trump’s big initiatives. Sarah, thanks for coming on.
Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: Let’s start with Trump’s big bill. The Senate parliamentarian just ruled that a number of the big provisions can’t stay in it if Republicans want to pass it via a 50-vote threshold in the reconciliation process. Those provisions include major cuts to Medicaid, some policies targeting undocumented immigrants, some anti-trans stuff, and a bunch of other things. What’s critical is that Republicans need some of those policies to get the “savings” they need to fund tax cuts for the rich. So this is a major problem for them. And yet Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Republicans won’t ignore the parliamentarian. Sarah, that’s a pleasant surprise. What do you make of where all this is right now?
Posner: Well, I know that Thune has said that and some other top Republicans like Susan Collins have echoed that, but other Republicans are starting to attack the parliamentarian in, of course, the very typically ugly, dangerous ways that we see too much of from the Republican Party in this climate of political violence. Tommy Tuberville took to Twitter today and called her “WOKE” and said she needs to be fired. So if that thinking starts to take hold and Trump enters the equation pressuring Thune, who knows what’s going to happen? I think that Thune is sincere in saying that he doesn’t want to get into a conflict or a conflagration with the Senate parliamentarian. But we also know that even when Republicans say that, at the end of the day when Trump enters the picture, they can rapidly change their minds.
Sargent: Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene got into this act. She went on this wild rant in which she said she’s a no on the bill if Republicans don’t fire the parliamentarian and keep all that stuff in there. She said that if all of that stuff stays in, Republicans will be voting for sex changes on kids, health care for illegals, all that awful stuff. So she said Thune must fire the Senate parliamentarian, and other MAGA types also did. As you mentioned, Senator Tuberville, who might be the dimmest MAGA light out there … but Representative Greg Steube also said she’s an “unelected swamp bureaucrat.” I don’t think Trump has called for a firing yet, but the danger here is it becomes a litmus test of sorts where being pro-MAGA and pro-Trump requires calling for the firing of the parliamentarian because she’s become the enemy, which is what Marjorie Taylor Greene said, right? What happens if that happens?
