John Bresnahan Helps Us Understand What The Hell Just Happened
00:53:
(Soundbite)
This is an attack on the government of the United States.
00:56:
(Soundbite)
It is an extremely serious thing.
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(Soundbite)
It did not even happen during the Civil War.
01:05:
(Isaac Dover)
Welcome to The Ticket.
01:06:
(Isaac Dover)
I'm Isaac Dover.
01:10:
(Isaac Dover)
This week, the President of the United States incited an attack on Congress.
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(Soundbite)
They are telling members of Congress to shelter in place.
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(Soundbite)
They are evacuating members of the House and Senate from doing their constitutionally prescribed duties.
01:24:
(Isaac Dover)
A mob of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol on Wednesday.
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(Soundbite)
Look at this.
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(Soundbite)
These protesters are inside Statuary Hall right now.
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(Soundbite)
You see the statues.
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(Soundbite)
This is a moment I never saw in my life.
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(Soundbite)
These individuals just rushed through security.
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(Soundbite)
They are inside Statuary Hall.
01:40:
(Isaac Dover)
As members and staff were rushed to safety, rioters smashed and vandalized or just took selfies carrying on.
01:47:
(Isaac Dover)
Ultimately, at least four people were left dead.
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(Soundbite)
I don't know about you, but this is an incredibly dangerous situation that's unfolding here in the United States.
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(Soundbite)
It's stunning, Wolf.
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(Soundbite)
It's absolutely stunning.
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(Soundbite)
And it's quite frankly dangerous.
02:04:
(Isaac Dover)
We've spent so much of the past four years attempting to put into perspective what may seem unthinkable.
02:10:
(Isaac Dover)
But the images from this week were truly unreal to witness.
02:14:
(Isaac Dover)
I spent a lot of time over the years reporting in the halls of Congress.
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(Isaac Dover)
Usually, you can't even walk around in some of the rooms without a tie-in jacket on.
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(Isaac Dover)
It's not just a symbol of American democracy, home to so much of our history.
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(Isaac Dover)
It's a place of work for hundreds of people.
02:28:
(Isaac Dover)
But with the lies about stolen elections coming from Republican politicians driving this mob, how do we even return to a normal work in Congress?
02:36:
(Isaac Dover)
Wednesday morning, as riders interrupted the objections over Arizona vote counts, I was in Wilmington, Delaware, watching it all unfold, reporting on the president-elect, who also could do nothing but watch, as a mob stormed the place he worked for 36 years.
02:51:
(Isaac Dover)
So for today's episode, I wanted to talk to someone who knows the Capitol almost as well.
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(Isaac Dover)
John Bresnahan has spent nearly three decades covering Congress.
03:00:
(Isaac Dover)
I knew him from when we were at Politico together, where he was their senior congressional reporter.
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(Isaac Dover)
John is now the co-founder of Punchbowl News, a newsletter and news service which just launched this week.
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(Isaac Dover)
I reached out on Thursday and he shared everything he saw the previous day, what it means for Congress going forward, and where he thinks it leaves us as a country that something like this could happen.
03:21:
(Isaac Dover)
Take a listen.
03:28:
(Isaac Dover)
John Bresnahan, thanks for being here on The Ticket.
03:31:
(Isaac Dover)
Thanks.
03:32:
(Isaac Dover)
You have been through a lot of stuff at the Capitol.
03:35:
(Isaac Dover)
You were in the Navy long before you were a reporter, right?
03:38:
(Isaac Dover)
What is the moment at which it becomes clear to you that it's cracked?
03:43:
(Isaac Dover)
And is it a scary moment when that happens?
03:46:
(John Bresnahan)
I didn't feel particularly scared for myself personally.
03:49:
(John Bresnahan)
I was scared for everyone.
03:52:
(John Bresnahan)
So I had been in the House chamber and they were doing the debate over the Arizona ejection.
03:57:
(John Bresnahan)
So we're in the House chamber and it was kind of a weird scene because the Republicans were sitting on the floor and they weren't socially disting.
04:04:
(John Bresnahan)
They were all there.
04:05:
(John Bresnahan)
Democratic members were sitting in the gallery.
04:07:
(John Bresnahan)
It was kind of weird.
04:09:
(John Bresnahan)
Probably 50 members sitting around me, Democratic members.
04:12:
(John Bresnahan)
I could hear them talking and everything.
04:14:
(John Bresnahan)
And then
04:15:
(John Bresnahan)
My colleague, Jake Sherman, starts bugging me.
04:18:
(John Bresnahan)
He's like, look, there's a problem with security fence outside.
04:21:
(John Bresnahan)
The police directed this temporary security fence.
04:23:
(John Bresnahan)
So I got up out of the chamber and walked out.
04:26:
(John Bresnahan)
You can't hear anything.
04:27:
(John Bresnahan)
And so I go outside.
04:28:
(John Bresnahan)
And then once I get outside the chamber, you can hear the crowd.
04:32:
(John Bresnahan)
I'm on the third floor of the Capitol.
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(John Bresnahan)
So I ran down to the second floor, the rotunda, which is the big dome where you can see.
04:38:
(John Bresnahan)
And the sound was overwhelming.
04:41:
(John Bresnahan)
There were hundreds of people pounding on this door from the east side of the Capitol.
04:47:
(John Bresnahan)
It's the side that faces the Supreme Court, the main plaza of the Capitol.
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(John Bresnahan)
And the sound was overwhelming.
04:55:
(John Bresnahan)
And then there were cops rushing up to the door and they started screaming at us, get out of here.
04:59:
(John Bresnahan)
So then I went back up to the third floor and that's where I could see them banging on the door.
05:04:
(John Bresnahan)
And it seemed like they had tools or some kind of devices.
05:07:
(John Bresnahan)
They had like iron rods or something.
05:09:
(John Bresnahan)
They were prepared to try to break windows.
05:12:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, these are bomb-proof windows on the east side of the Capitol on these doors.
05:15:
(John Bresnahan)
So they had to be prepared to do that.
05:18:
(John Bresnahan)
And that was when I went down to the rotunda the first time and the sound and the
05:23:
(John Bresnahan)
anger these people screaming let us in you know stop the steal and usa and all this stuff that's when i was like this is nothing i've ever seen before they removed everybody from the chamber they removed the reporters to a safe location yes so i had left the chamber and by the time i left the rotunda they had sealed the members and reporters inside the chamber so there's the
05:48:
(John Bresnahan)
The house floor covers actually two floors.
05:51:
(John Bresnahan)
There's one on the second floor is where you access the floor itself.
05:55:
(John Bresnahan)
And then there's on the third floor where you access the viewing galleries.
05:58:
(John Bresnahan)
And they have actually literally doors that close there.
06:02:
(John Bresnahan)
And they have people who are doorkeepers, you know, it's an old traditional job.
06:06:
(John Bresnahan)
And so they seal those doors.
06:08:
(John Bresnahan)
So I couldn't get back into the chamber.
06:11:
(John Bresnahan)
so i went into my press gallery this is where all the reporters who work out of the capital work in press galleries and the way that our gallery is constructed i was actually able to access there's a catwalk above the statuary hall which is where if you ever watch the state of union where all the hundreds of reporters and members of congress
06:32:
(John Bresnahan)
do interviews right after the president ends the State of Union speech.
06:36:
(John Bresnahan)
So I was up like a half floor above these people and I could see them coming into Statuary Hall and there were no cops.
06:42:
(John Bresnahan)
I didn't see any cops.
06:43:
(John Bresnahan)
I sat there and watched the whole thing.
06:46:
(John Bresnahan)
First you'd see a couple of protesters and a huge, you know, it was a trickle and there was a flood of people.
06:52:
(John Bresnahan)
So they were walking from the center of the Capitol, the rotunda, and they were walking toward the house, which is on the south side and the Senate is on the north side.
06:59:
(John Bresnahan)
And they were trying to get in the house and you could hear them banging on the doors of the house.
07:05:
(John Bresnahan)
At that point, inside the chamber, police officers had pulled guns and they were going to shoot anybody who was trying to get in the house floor because the members were still on the floor.
07:13:
(John Bresnahan)
But I was actually down there.
07:14:
(John Bresnahan)
I could watch what was happening from the outside.
07:16:
(John Bresnahan)
So it was kind of an extraordinary, my viewing point was,
07:19:
(John Bresnahan)
Probably one of the better ones for any of the reporters inside the building because I wasn't locked down at that point.
07:25:
(John Bresnahan)
And then I was sitting there for at least an hour.
07:27:
(John Bresnahan)
And it was weird.
07:28:
(John Bresnahan)
I saw some of these protesters.
07:29:
(John Bresnahan)
So they come into Statuary Hall.
07:31:
(John Bresnahan)
So, you know, there's statues of, you know, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
07:35:
(John Bresnahan)
Right, that's the original house chamber.
07:37:
(John Bresnahan)
That's like, it's not just a room.
07:40:
(John Bresnahan)
It's like history there, right?
07:43:
(John Bresnahan)
And some of them were taking like selfies with the statues.
07:46:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, they were like tourists and others.
07:48:
(John Bresnahan)
It was strange.
07:48:
(John Bresnahan)
I saw this woman come in.
07:51:
(John Bresnahan)
And she, you know, she pulls out this document, she starts giving a speech and she clearly had people with her and they formed this crowd and they were filming it.
07:59:
(John Bresnahan)
So, you know, she was reading a speech about the Constitution and, you know, she was clearly doing something for social media.
08:06:
(John Bresnahan)
That was the other thing.
08:06:
(John Bresnahan)
They were all, you could see they were all putting stuff on social media.
08:09:
(John Bresnahan)
And then eventually after, you know, an hour, 75 minutes, the cops got control again because people were running amok in the Capitol.
08:18:
(John Bresnahan)
The SWAT team came back down toward me and these were really serious guys with really big guns and they were screaming at me to get back inside.
08:25:
(John Bresnahan)
So I actually ended up
08:26:
(Isaac Dover)
back at my gallery and then i couldn't see anything and then it was sealed off then we were eventually taken out of that building and and you know for another three or four hours and members of congress were scared you said you were you didn't find yourself scared at any point but you know these people you've covered them uh many of them for for a long time uh i mean it seems like there was real uh terror going on for for folks there's
08:50:
(Isaac Dover)
A story of Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs in a helicopter crash in Iraq, serving in the National Guard, hiding in her office, not letting anybody in the door.
09:02:
(Isaac Dover)
There are lots of stories of it seems like pure terror among members of Congress who showed up to the United States Capitol.
09:11:
(John Bresnahan)
Oh, absolutely.
09:12:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, look, and they weren't targeting me.
09:15:
(John Bresnahan)
I'm a white middle-aged man, you know, a reporter.
09:18:
(John Bresnahan)
But if I take my press pass, you know, no one's going to know who I am.
09:22:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, they're not in this crowd.
09:24:
(John Bresnahan)
So, you know, a member or a senator, that's a completely different thing.
09:28:
(John Bresnahan)
A person of color, you know, Nancy Pelosi, somebody like that, that they could direct or anger toward, you know, whatever.
09:34:
(John Bresnahan)
clearly raging and, you know, Pelosi and everything she stands for.
09:38:
(John Bresnahan)
I think the members, it's a completely different scene.
09:43:
(John Bresnahan)
And I talked to a bunch of members and they were scared.
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(John Bresnahan)
Remember these extraordinarily angry, this extraordinarily angry mom got into the Capitol.
09:51:
(John Bresnahan)
They hadn't been searched.
09:52:
(John Bresnahan)
They could have had guns and knives and other weapons.
09:55:
(John Bresnahan)
And, you know, we did have one shooting there.
09:58:
(John Bresnahan)
And there were actually three other people said they died of like medical.
10:03:
(Isaac Dover)
We don't know exactly what it is yet, but like some kind of medical.
10:07:
(John Bresnahan)
I do know that there was one police officer was getting CPR.
10:09:
(John Bresnahan)
I know that.
10:11:
(John Bresnahan)
So I hope it's not a police officer, but I don't have any reason to believe it is.
10:14:
(John Bresnahan)
But, you know, look, if I was a member, I would have been scared, too.
10:19:
(Isaac Dover)
You were at the Capitol at a lot of other major moments.
10:24:
(Isaac Dover)
You were there on September 11th.
10:26:
(Isaac Dover)
I was.
10:26:
(Isaac Dover)
How does what happened on Wednesday compare to what you have seen there before?
10:33:
(John Bresnahan)
There's nothing really compared.
10:36:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, you know...
10:38:
(John Bresnahan)
At one point yesterday, some protesters had gotten in, but they were trying to open the doors so they could let in more of the other protesters in.
10:46:
(John Bresnahan)
And one police officer in riot gear was like pushing them, trying to push them out.
10:52:
(John Bresnahan)
And they were fighting with him and he got knocked down and he was dead.
10:54:
(John Bresnahan)
lying on the ground and I actually ran down and picked him up and then two of his colleagues came and got him but like I mean the idea that you know they were attacking police officers to get inside the building and that you know a reporter had to like physically help pick up a police officer and drag him to safety from a crowd I mean it was just
11:15:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, there's nothing I've ever seen like that.
11:18:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, I was there in 1998 when the two police officers were shot.
11:24:
(John Bresnahan)
I was there in 2001 and 9-11, which was just terrifying.
11:27:
(John Bresnahan)
But, you know, it was a lack of knowledge.
11:31:
(John Bresnahan)
We knew what was happening here.
11:32:
(John Bresnahan)
We knew that there were going to be these protesters outside and they didn't prepare adequately.
11:37:
(John Bresnahan)
And then I just the rage of these people, the anger once they were inside.
11:43:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, it was just crazy.
11:45:
(Isaac Dover)
I mean, you were you've been covering this for the last years, last couple of weeks.
11:49:
(Isaac Dover)
You were on Tuesday.
11:50:
(Isaac Dover)
I saw you tweeting from being at one of the rallies that was outside the Capitol, sort of in anticipation of what Wednesday was going to be.
12:00:
(Isaac Dover)
It didn't seem until it started like things were going to go crazy.
12:06:
(Isaac Dover)
It sounds like.
12:07:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, there was probably 500, 600 people on Tuesday, including Mike Lindell, my pillow guy, and Ali Alexander, the organizers of Stop the Steal.
12:18:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, they were using some pretty incendiary language.
12:22:
(John Bresnahan)
And that was a group called, you know, Moms for America.
12:26:
(John Bresnahan)
They were, you know, talking about rebelling and civil war.
12:30:
(John Bresnahan)
And so it was concerning...
12:32:
(John Bresnahan)
But, you know, you never think, well, I mean, the Capitol police are a really interesting force.
12:39:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, they have to deal with – when the Capitol is – remember, it's a, you know, the working Capitol of the United States, but it's also, you know, an office building, an old one at that, and, you know, a museum and a tourist destination and really a symbolic heart of the American democracy.
12:53:
(John Bresnahan)
And so –
12:54:
(John Bresnahan)
They deal with protests.
12:55:
(John Bresnahan)
They deal with people from all over the world coming there and they want to be heard and they want to be seen and they suffer from all sorts of issues.
13:03:
(John Bresnahan)
I saw a Capitol Police officer on a summer day once talk a guy waving a samurai sword down.
13:10:
(John Bresnahan)
He was on the sidewalk and was waving around and, you know, and they could have taken out their guns and tried to.
13:16:
(John Bresnahan)
do that but it's kind of talked him down and you know i've seen the capital police you know handle the million man march and stuff like that i mean they try to accommodate protesters but you know what happened yesterday was just you know shocking shocking shocking they either underrated the size of the crowd or the intensity of crowd or both and you know and then there's a lot of people criticizing the force saying officers were too accommodating these people and some that some officers wave them in and
13:44:
(John Bresnahan)
I don't know if I believe any of that.
13:46:
(Isaac Dover)
I mean, it does seem like there's a difference between the response, just the preparations versus those that were there over last summer when the George Floyd process were going on.
13:57:
(John Bresnahan)
Oh, absolutely.
13:58:
(John Bresnahan)
I think if this was a minority crowd, I think the presence would have been dramatically scaled up.
14:04:
(John Bresnahan)
the aggressiveness of the police would have been scaled up.
14:08:
(John Bresnahan)
I'm going to also though in their defense, I don't think anybody thought that the president of the United States would be egging his followers on from, you know, his own rally a mile down the road to, you know,
14:19:
(John Bresnahan)
Go protest and go, you know, tell these people how angry you are and stop the steal.
14:25:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, he egged on that crowd.
14:27:
(John Bresnahan)
And I mean, think about it.
14:29:
(John Bresnahan)
We had to call out the National Guard to protect the Capitol from protesters egged on by the president of the United States.
14:35:
(John Bresnahan)
The insanity of this whole episode is unbelievable.
14:47:
(Isaac Dover)
We're going to take a short break.
14:48:
(Isaac Dover)
We'll have more with John Bresnahan in a moment.
15:59:
(Isaac Dover)
One of the things that I heard in a lot of the TV coverage that was coming afterwards is this, well, this is the end of the Trump times.
16:09:
(Isaac Dover)
He's finally pushed it too far.
16:11:
(Isaac Dover)
And it seems to me like there's an element of wishful thinking in that of people who never supported Donald Trump anyway and were hoping that there would be an end to it and wanted to declare that this was it.
16:23:
(Isaac Dover)
I saw someone on TV say, no Republican will stand with him anymore after this.
16:27:
(Isaac Dover)
But...
16:27:
(Isaac Dover)
Let's talk about the political situation going forward here.
16:31:
(Isaac Dover)
There were about a dozen senators who were going to object to Joe Biden's certification as president.
16:36:
(Isaac Dover)
About six of them peeled off.
16:38:
(Isaac Dover)
But in the House, there's still about 100 who were supporting it.
16:41:
(Isaac Dover)
What does this mean going forward?
16:44:
(John Bresnahan)
I hope this is a sobering moment for the country.
16:48:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, I don't know if that's the case.
16:50:
(John Bresnahan)
There was 120 senators.
16:51:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, Republicans voted to, you know, sustain an objection to Arizona's election last night.
16:58:
(John Bresnahan)
House Republicans.
16:58:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, 121.
17:00:
(John Bresnahan)
Just hours after the Capitol was sacked.
17:02:
(Isaac Dover)
Including the minority leader and the whip.
17:05:
(John Bresnahan)
Yeah, including the minority leader and the whip.
17:07:
(John Bresnahan)
Now, I understand part of the reasoning from the leadership was like, look, we have to protect our members from, you know, this vengeful president.
17:16:
(John Bresnahan)
We have to give them cover.
17:17:
(John Bresnahan)
But I think at some point that has to change.
17:20:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, Matt Gaetz from Florida, a Trump ally was standing up last night, you know, suggesting it was Antifa, you know, disguised as Trump supporters that did this.
17:29:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, it was just insane.
17:31:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, I saw that crowd.
17:33:
(John Bresnahan)
I was right there watching hundreds of them.
17:35:
(John Bresnahan)
That wasn't Antifa.
17:36:
(Isaac Dover)
And there was a fight in the middle of the night in the House floor, and Conor Lamb is a congressman from Pennsylvania who is a veteran himself.
17:43:
(Isaac Dover)
He said, we know that the attack today didn't materialize out of nowhere.
17:47:
(Isaac Dover)
It was inspired by lies, the same lies that you're hearing in this room tonight, and the members who are repeating those lies should be ashamed of themselves.
17:53:
(Isaac Dover)
Their constituents should be ashamed of them.
17:56:
(Isaac Dover)
He is a Democrat.
17:56:
(Isaac Dover)
He was talking to Republicans.
17:58:
(Isaac Dover)
This created, in the middle of the night, a fight on the House floor over whether his comments needed to be struck from the record, which seems like...
18:06:
(John Bresnahan)
a ridiculously quaint argument to have given what was going on a few hours earlier in the hallways of congress look i don't know if the republican party changes direction after this i don't know what happens to the republican party you know i mean we do have a two-party system and one party can't be a reasonable partner in governing we have a serious problem i mean you know we have an establishment republican party mitch mcconnell kevin mccarthy the establishment
18:34:
(John Bresnahan)
And then we have the other Republican Party led by Donald Trump and whatever other elements that come under that, you know, libertarian.
18:42:
(John Bresnahan)
It's attracted fringe movements, the white supremacists, QAnon, it's a vaxxers.
18:47:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, you know, it's Nazis walking around.
18:51:
(Isaac Dover)
It's just.
18:52:
(Isaac Dover)
The thing that I have found myself saying is that I remember saying to an editor a couple, two years ago about that if I had pitched a story to say that there were Nazis that were involved in some elements of the Republican Party in like 2014, I would have been told stop being an idiot and like hyperventilating.
19:13:
(Isaac Dover)
And now if I pitch a story to say there are Nazis that are involved in some of the elements of the Republican Party, I would be told by an editor, yeah, everybody knows that.
19:21:
(Isaac Dover)
And that's like the change of what's happening here is very hard to process of what goes on.
19:30:
(Isaac Dover)
And, you know, Congress is like they have to show up in that in those chambers every day in the House floor and the Senate floor and theoretically like work on legislation.
19:41:
(Isaac Dover)
It just doesn't seem to me like.
19:43:
(Isaac Dover)
There's a real lesson that is being learned, despite the fact that most people watching this would hope that there would be a lesson learned.
19:55:
(John Bresnahan)
I, you know, I don't know.
19:57:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, like I've watched, you know, a thousand Proud Boys movies.
20:00:
(John Bresnahan)
March down Pennsylvania Avenue and go to the Washington Monument.
20:04:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, I never thought we'd see anything like that.
20:06:
(John Bresnahan)
I, you know, I don't know where this party goes.
20:09:
(John Bresnahan)
I don't know how the moderate, you know, there is a place, of course, in American politics for conservatives.
20:16:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, there has to be, you know, that's, you know, the trap tradition in this country.
20:20:
(John Bresnahan)
But, you know, since the rise of the Tea Party movement,
20:23:
(John Bresnahan)
this element inside the party.
20:25:
(John Bresnahan)
And then, of course, Trump, you know, the Tea Party led to Trump eventually.
20:28:
(John Bresnahan)
But then, you know, you throw in social media and you throw in this, you know, this anger.
20:33:
(John Bresnahan)
And I don't know where it goes.
20:34:
(John Bresnahan)
I don't know where the Republican Party goes.
20:36:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, I think I'm hoping yesterday was like a high watermark and like
20:41:
(Isaac Dover)
you know people say you know god we've got to change but i don't know yeah in the middle of all of this uh the republican party sorting itself out we're going to have a change in power the democrats will take the majority in the senate because of those races in georgia so let's close with this i guess you've covered a lot of back and forth the house switches control the senate switches control that what is going to happen now for joe biden is that he is going to come in as president with very importantly for a new president both the house and the senate in his party control
21:10:
(Isaac Dover)
That's the way that Donald Trump had it for the first two years of his presidency.
21:13:
(Isaac Dover)
Obama had it for the first two years of his presidency.
21:16:
(Isaac Dover)
George Bush had it for more than the first two years of his presidency.
21:19:
(Isaac Dover)
Bill Clinton had it for the first two years of his presidency.
21:22:
(Isaac Dover)
This is important for what an agenda will look like.
21:26:
(Isaac Dover)
What happens as now we have this new alignment of power in Washington?
21:34:
(Isaac Dover)
How much does it change the way that things have been operating now?
21:37:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, it's a big moment for Biden.
21:40:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, you know, the thing that's most important in gaining Senate control is he'll gain control of the nomination.
21:45:
(John Bresnahan)
So Chuck Schumer in there, and otherwise he would have had to go to, you know, Mitch McConnell on every nomination.
21:51:
(John Bresnahan)
If McConnell's a majority leader, he can just kill a nomination and he doesn't, you know, have to even bring it up.
21:56:
(John Bresnahan)
We saw with Merrick Garland when Garland was nominated for the Supreme Court.
21:59:
(John Bresnahan)
Now, at least,
22:01:
(John Bresnahan)
you know, Biden's going to get a hearing on his nominations.
22:04:
(John Bresnahan)
Now, the problem is it's 50-50.
22:06:
(John Bresnahan)
So any one senator can, you know, especially on the Democratic side, can, you know, has enormous, enormous power.
22:13:
(John Bresnahan)
But, you know, we're also going to see a huge debate
22:16:
(John Bresnahan)
inside the Democratic Party between the progressive and moderate elements on the agenda, on Biden's agenda?
22:22:
(John Bresnahan)
Does he push Medicare for all?
22:23:
(John Bresnahan)
Does he push, you know, climate change legislation, tax legislation?
22:27:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, can they get it through the Senate?
22:30:
(John Bresnahan)
And will they blow up the filibuster?
22:31:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, will they end the filibuster in order to pass Biden's agenda?
22:35:
(John Bresnahan)
So the major, dramatic, huge change to Senate rules to do that.
22:40:
(John Bresnahan)
And so we're going to see a number of real
22:44:
(John Bresnahan)
serious policy and political fights both inside each party and then, of course, against each other.
22:52:
(Isaac Dover)
Do you think that we're going to see a functioning Congress in Washington in the years?
22:57:
(Isaac Dover)
Let's take it one step at a time.
22:59:
(Isaac Dover)
In the year ahead?
23:03:
(John Bresnahan)
I mean, I've been
23:04:
(John Bresnahan)
Covering the Capitol Hill every day for 27 years, first start becoming 29 years ago.
23:09:
(John Bresnahan)
2020 was the most frustrating year to ever cover Congress.
23:12:
(John Bresnahan)
Of course, the pandemic, which is a national tragedy and how difficult that made it.
23:16:
(John Bresnahan)
But like to see the inaction of Congress in the face of this disaster that the country was going was just really like you wanted to just yell at me like, come on, guys, you're American.
23:27:
(John Bresnahan)
Do something.
23:29:
(John Bresnahan)
I think that.
23:31:
(John Bresnahan)
We're going to see a very energetic Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate for this year.
23:37:
(John Bresnahan)
How much they'll actually be able to get done, how much people will, you know, if they if they, you know, try to defend their own political future, rather than thinking about the country or the party, you know, that'll be the issue.
23:50:
(John Bresnahan)
You know, there's a senator saying I'm more worried about my reelection in 2022 than getting this bill passed, which I know would help people.
23:56:
(John Bresnahan)
people are going to have to start setting aside their own careers and do the right thing, you know, for the country.
24:03:
(John Bresnahan)
And I think, you know, they have to have the political courage to do it.
24:06:
(John Bresnahan)
So, you know, I don't know.
24:07:
(John Bresnahan)
I think we'll see at the initial point of this Congress, I think, you know, the next six months, I think we're going to see a pretty
24:14:
(Isaac Dover)
frantic legislative pace beyond that we'll see what happens uh it's a strange situation to be in as a political reporter uh to say it would be nice if they would set aside their careers and focus on doing the job but that that is where uh you and i and i think a lot of people are left at at this point from just seeing what has got on uh not just in the last couple of days but in the last uh
24:39:
(Isaac Dover)
bunch of years of here.
24:40:
(Isaac Dover)
So we'll see.
24:41:
(Isaac Dover)
But you were the Sherpa that we needed to guide us through this.
24:45:
(Isaac Dover)
So John Bresnahan, thanks for being here on The Ticket.
24:49:
(Isaac Dover)
Thanks for having me.
24:57:
(Isaac Dover)
That's it for this week of The Ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.
25:00:
(Isaac Dover)
Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Atlantic senior producer A.C. Valdez.
25:07:
(Isaac Dover)
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
25:09:
(Isaac Dover)
If you have thoughts on the show or ideas for guests, email me at isaacattheatlantic.com.
25:14:
(Isaac Dover)
Thanks for listening, and stay safe.