Will Trump's big beautiful bill bankrupt America?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided, the Vice President votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed. That is J.D. Vance breaking the 50-50 tie in the Senate to approve President Trump's flagship big so-called beautiful so-called bill. But there are opponents still in the House of Representatives and there is one opponent in particular in California, one Elon Musk, who thinks that the bill is a disaster. Who is going to win in this arm wrestle, Donald Trump or Elon Musk? Welcome to the News Agents USA.

0:55It's John. It's Emily. And if you've listened to the mood music in the last few days from the President, you will have realised that he wasn't entirely confident this bill was going to get passed. It was very, very close on its first reading in the House of Representatives. He wants it all done and dusted by Friday. And last night was a real legislative test. there were people who were adamant that they would not vote for it. One of them, Tom Tillis, was so sure he could not vote for this bill that he decided he would resign next year rather than try and fight his Senate seat again. And that is because it's incredibly controversial.

1:35It adds three trillion dollars to the national debt and it takes money away from some of America's poorest and gives to the richest. So if you just go through the numbers on this particular piece of legislation, It takes health care away from 17 million Americans, takes food assistance away from 3 million, eliminates school meal access for more than 18 million children, adds nearly four trillion, as you just said, to the national debt, sends electricity costs surging and substantially raises health care costs for older adults who've got Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act coverage. and all of this to fund tax cuts for the very wealthiest.

2:15It is the Robin Hood principle in reverse. Yeah, and it is, I guess, Donald Trump's way of saying the people who got me elected were waiting for me to ensure that their tax cuts that I brought in in 2017 that would have run out in the following year will now be made permanent. So it is a kind of thank you gift to the billionaire, to the 1 % who basically backed Donald Trump because they thought he was the man to get growth going and would bring down their taxes. Here you go. This is his big, beautiful bill that does that. But you mentioned electricity costs, and that's a really important part of it as well, because what he's essentially done is he has got rid of the environmental priorities that Obama tried to introduce more than 15 years ago.

3:01And what he's essentially said is, yeah, you know, all those, the big energy giants that came and gave me their support, all the people that were hoping that we could go back to fracking and oil and carbon and fossil fuels. This is a thank you note to them, too. We're going to put aside all the kind of new look energy, all the green energy subsidies. And yep, this is my little thank you to you. So Americans are going to find electricity. And this is the bit that confounds logic when you think about it. But Donald Trump has made a career in this past decade or so that we have been covering him of defying political gravity.

3:36It is that actually it was blue collar America that got Donald Trump elected as president. I mean, the thousand or two thousand or five thousand, however many billionaires there are in America with their yachts and all the rest of it, who knows? They did not get him elected. They certainly pumped a lot of money into his campaign. But it's the real votes of poor people who are now going to be most profoundly affected by this big, beautiful bill that are going to be the losers. and you think, well, where's the thank you letter for them? Yeah, and that's why it's worth digging around a little bit into the congressional politics of this.

4:13In other words, working out who was thinking about their state, who was thinking about their party, who was thinking about their kind of MAGA cult leader. And I mentioned Tom Tillis at the beginning. He's the senator for North Carolina. He's Tom with a T-H, Tom. and he is somebody who's gone on record and said, I can't in all conscience take this back to my constituents because there will be a lot of veterans who suffer from this. There will be a lot of poorer people. There will be a lot of people who are expecting to use the health benefits in this that have now vanished. And I can't in all conscience look them in the eye and say this is a good bill.

4:52So he voted against it. He knows he will incur the wrath of Donald Trump and he voted against it saying, look, I'm not going to fight another election. I'm done here. So what they told me is that, yeah, it's rough, but North Carolina's used the system. They're going to have to make it work. All right. So what do I tell 663 ,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there? Now, Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J.

5:42Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet Room when I was there with finance where he said we can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programs. He's mad. He's an angry man. And he's basically said, fuck this, I'm out of here next year anyway. The other person who voted against the bill is one Rand Paul Center for Kentucky, who was voted in in the 2010 sort of Tea Party midterms and said, I'm going to come to Washington to kind of explode it from within. You know, he was what we used to think of as a rebel. He is a fiscal conservative, a fiscal hawk. And he voted against it on principle within his own principles that he's laid out clearly.

6:22He doesn't want to see the deficit grow. He does not want to see three trillion, maybe four trillion added to America's national debt. So that was a slam dunk and he didn't like it. So just on that number of the three point three trillion that it's estimated, that is a number that comes from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, which is kind of the UK equivalent. If you're listening in Britain, is the Office for Budget Responsibility. It's the independent body that marks the homework of the government, the administration, whether it be Democrat or Republican. About Tom Tillis, just one thing you said there, you know, fuck it, I'm not going to stay around for this.

6:59I mean, the fact of the matter is he knew he wouldn't be able to stay around. Of course. I mean, Donald Trump would have gone after him. There would have been a primary challenger, very well funded. Who would have been MAGA? You don't incur the wrong. That's what I'm saying. That's principle. He's saying, I know I'm not going to keep my job, but it's more important to me to. To do the right thing for the people that I represent in North Carolina and go out on a high note. And then we come to another curious figure, Lisa Makowski, the senator for Alaska, who originally came into the Senate on a writing.

7:30She wasn't actually standing, but people wrote her name on the ballot paper and she won the Alaska seat. And she's always been put in this bracket, moderate Republican. And you always think she's going to be the one who will rebel. well, she's going to be the one who stands firm. And when it came to it... I mean, she did vote to impeach Trump. One of the few who vote to impeach Trump second time around. But this time around, she said, I don't like this bill. I think it's wrong. We're working to a completely artificial timeline. I'll vote for it. Yeah, I mean, she was clever in the sense that what she said was, I want particular opt-outs for Alaska.

8:09In the way that we used to with the EU. You know, we said, can you carve out some special treatment for the UK? You know, we don't mind what the EU is doing, but we want to be, you know. Yeah, we got opt-outs on the social chapter on whatever it happened. She's basically done that for Alaska. And she angered Rand Paul, who thought, well, actually, where is your backbone here? Either you're against it or you're for it. Don't just go off and do your own thing to the detriment of the rest of the country. And a reporter puts that question from Rand Paul directly to her. Just listen to this exchange.

8:39Senator Paul said that this was, that your vote was a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country. Oh my God. That's what Senator Paul said. My question was easy. Senator, we've got the, uh... I didn't say it, ma 'am. I'm just asking for your response. My response is, I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska. and I live up to that every single day. I fight for my state's interests and I make sure that Alaskans are understood. Do I like this bill? No. Because I try to take care of Alaska's interests. But I know, I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.

9:33I don't like that. I don't like the fact that we moved through an artificial deadline, an artificial timeline, to produce something, to meet a deadline, rather than to actually try to produce the best bill for the country. But when I saw the direction that this is going, you can either say, I don't like it and not try to help my state or you can roll up your sleeves. Well, one of the concessions that she did, rolling up her sleeves, which sounds so deliciously sort of 19th century somehow, she has got an opt-out for whaling captains. That's W-H-A-L-I-N-G rather than W-A-I-L-I-N-G. You know, I'm just crying as a captain.

10:27A tax break for whaling captains. How many whaling captains are there? You suddenly realise America is such a different country. All politics is local. All politics is local. And I do think that's kind of relevant because what we're seeing, I mean, she's never liked Trump. You know, she has been staunchly anti-Trump. She's the one, she's the senator who we covered a few weeks ago saying, I feel scared. Do you remember she used this crazy sort of line? Intimidated. Intimidated. Like, well, are you scared? Are you going to stand up to him? Or are you going to be scared and vote for his bill? And the way she's kind of reconciled it, I guess, in her head is to say, I'm essentially Queen of Alaska.

11:04I'm not part of the rest of America. Yeah. Forget, you know, the rest of the mainland. I'm just going to look at my state and do whatever I can for them, even if it means tax breaks for oil and captions. Exactly. But the statement, the written statement she put out is that my sincere hope that this is not the final product. This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the president's desk. we need to work together to get this right well of course by voting for it last night she ensures that it does go on and probably will get to the president's desk which is sort of such a tortured piece of logic to say this is a bad bill I'm voting for it it still has to go back to the house now and he wants the whole thing done by Friday and there is every chance that it won't actually go through by Friday and of course Friday is July the 4th it's July the 4th and he loves a bit of independence so there's all that going on I mean we should talk about a couple of the other sort of individual characters that have come out of this as well.

11:59Susan Collins, who very much sits in the Murkowski camp, which is these two women who are often sort of talked about together as they are Trump sceptical. I don't think they really like him. I think they're scared of standing up to him in case they then get primaried and lose their seats. And they've gone slightly different ways on this. So Susan Collins did vote against the bill. Murkowski went with the bill with her opt-outs. And the other person that was sort of curious in this whole mix was Josh Hawley. Now, you might remember him as the senator who, on the day of the Jan 6th attempted insurrection, went past the crowds of rioters holding his MAGA fist up.

12:37In other words, he could not have been more Trumpy if he tried. But he, again, is somebody who thought he could not take the Medicaid cuts back to people in the state of Missouri. And he said he was going to vote against it. In the end, he came round. So you've been discussing this idea of the port barrel politics. We don't actually know exactly what's going on in terms of each state and what they're getting from this or whether they've just found a way of reconciling what they really believe with, you know, what they have to do politically to make it expedient. But I think it raises the question now of that you said at the very beginning of what happens if they come face to face with Elon Musk, who absolutely hates this bill.

13:17Because what he has said is that if this bill gets passed and ends up on the president's desk, he is going to start a new political party and he is going to challenge in the midterm elections, which take place next November, any Republican who voted for this because it increases the deficit to such a massive extent and in Musk's view, risks the future of the US economy. So you've got the world's richest man saying, if you do this, congressman or senator, then I'm coming after you. And at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you've got Donald Trump saying, congressman, senator, if you do what Musk says, I'm coming after you.

14:01And you've got to decide who puts the shit up you most. Is it Donald Trump or Elon Musk? Because sure as eggs is eggs, they are both trying to pull these congressmen and women in entirely different directions. In a moment, we're going to be talking about law, lawfare and the state of the rule of law in Trump's America with Alex Whiting. Now, Alex worked alongside Jack Smith, who was the special counsel in the Department of Justice. and we're going to be asking him about those cases they brought against Trump and what he thinks America believes of its rule of law right now.

14:45The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. Well, joining us now is Alex Whiting. Now, Alex is Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School where he teaches, he writes, He consults, including on international criminal prosecution offices. And until January of this year, he was assistant special counsel at the US special counsel's office. In other words, he worked under Jack Smith on those investigations that you will remember relating to Donald Trump, the one about classified documents and the one about the 2020 election interference cases. So, Alex, let's just kind of pause there to get a sense of what your role was.

15:25when you worked with Jack Smith there? What were you doing? Just talk us through it. I was, as you said, I was assistant special counsel. I was part of the team. I was just one of the lawyers that worked under the direction of Jack Smith. And I participated in preparing the case. I worked specifically on the January 6th prosecution. And as you said, I did that up until January of this year when, of course, the office was disbanded. The January the 6th prosecution case seemed for many to come too late into that sort of, you know, four year term. Obviously, it was based around what happened over the events of the 2020 election.

16:04Why did it take so long to kind of to come about? Well, I wasn't there at the beginning. I only joined the office in August of 2023. But, you know, prosecution, serious prosecutions, investigations take time when they're done carefully. and collecting the evidence, putting it together, reviewing documents, conducting interviews. A serious, well-done investigation takes time. And that was the case here. It just took some time to put the case together. Do you think with hindsight, I mean, do you look back on that time and think that actually helped him to power? I'm going to leave that one to the historians and the political commentators.

16:46You know, I think that the Trump phenomenon and how he came to power is an incredibly complex story that I think people in the United States and around the world are still trying to understand and figure out, is it economic? Is it cultural, political? I think it would be wrong to say that there was any one cause or any one thing that brought him back to power. Yeah, fair enough. I guess what I'm thinking about is that his response, I mean, he could have gone two ways on this. You know, he could have said, I believe I'm innocent, I'll fight it in the courts. But he didn't. He said, it's lawfare.

17:25The justice system is against me. And he seemed really throughout the last year of that election campaign to convince a lot of people that that was true. Do you think something has shifted in the public response to the rule of law now in America? Well, that's a great question. And I'll take it as a broad question about the rule of law. I think we're in a period where the rule of law is highly contested. And it'd be fascinating for historians and commentators later to kind of unpack this and figure out how we got to this point. How did we get here today? It's not just one event. It's not just Donald Trump.

18:09I think there are lots of threads that lead to this about people thinking about law as being nothing more than politics and simplifying it that way. But here we have, I think, reached a kind of crisis point where the law is being bent and used and manipulated in ways that we really have not seen before in this country, at least for generations, let's say. And the courts are pushing back. Literally hundreds of legal cases have been brought against the administration's actions. And in many cases, the judges have stopped the administration, have rebuffed, have found that the actions are not compliant with the law, bending the law, breaking the law, failing to respect due process and so forth.

19:05So it's a really, I think it's a very critical moment in our history right now. Do you believe that the justice system, the rule of law is robust enough in the US to withstand the kind of assaults that we're seeing? I do. I do. I have confidence that the justice system will hold firm, but it's being changed. And it's being changed in ways that will be lasting. And I think it's a fantasy to think that with the next president, whether the next president is a Democrat or Republican, things will sort of go back to normal. Well, just as this is an aberration, I think some of the changes that have occurred will remain.

19:48Some will take a lot of time to rebuild. For example, there are many norms within the Department of Justice that are being transformed. And those took decades, generations to build and construct. And they were respected and honoured and cherished by all actors, by both political parties. Now they've been within months, they've been torn down. It'll take a long time to rebuild those. Can you give us just an example of what those changes look like? Yeah, I'll give you two examples. So one example is that historically, at least very firmly since the 1970s, but even preceding that, there's been a clear separation between the White House and the Justice Department.

20:37So there's been care that the although the Justice Department is within the executive branch, the president selects the attorney general who's then confirmed by the Senate. There has been a norm of independence for the Department of Justice so that, for example, the president doesn't instruct the attorney general who to prosecute, who not to prosecute. That norm has essentially been torn down because the president has ordered the department to investigate certain people and has also rewarded friends and supporters with either pardons or dropping their cases. So there's been direct control of the Department of Justice from the White House on a number of big cases.

21:22A second example is the department traditionally has been largely staffed by career personnel with a kind of political layer on top that changes with each administration. And that the dynamic between the political appointees and the career appointees is healthy, important. It creates stability, continuity and respect for the rule of law. This administration is trying to change that and is trying to make the career people be either political appointees or have to show some allegiance to the administration. And that dramatically changes the culture of the department, how the rule of law is interpreted, respected, and it will really change the feel of the department.

22:12And that will be a difficult thing to undo, because what will the next administration do? Fire everybody who was hired under this administration? Will they return to the civil service protections? Those are really complex questions that people thinking about the future will have to start thinking about now. So I guess, you know, we've seen Trump targeting opponents, whether it's pressurizing the DOJ to investigate Hillary Clinton or Andrew McCabe or Comey. But the ones I'm guessing you're thinking about particularly are people like Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. In other words, Chris Krebs was what we would call a civil servant who was tasked with finding out whether there had been election interference in 2020.

22:56And he brought evidence to suggest there had been no intellectual interference at all. And he was targeted by Trump and accused of treason. And I'm wondering what this does to the kind of people that will want to come in and work now at the DOJ or work in government. Do you think it is having a direct effect on who is being hired and what they're doing in the job? Oh, absolutely. And you have to remember that both Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor were in the first Trump administration. These are not Biden appointees. These were working in the Trump administration. And they have been targeted in this way with really severe consequences for their lives, Even though the charges have not been brought and we'll see if they are ever brought or if this is just sort of threat and bluster, their lives have still been have already been directly affected.

23:50They have to deal with the investigation. And it's very, to your bigger point, I think it is very chilling, very chilling for people who work in government to think that at any moment, because of the way they do their job, doing their job the way they're supposed to do, doing it honestly and faithfully could get them in the crosshairs. I think that will deter good people from coming into government. It'll also affect people in government in the way they do their job. They're going to be more cautious. It's hard to imagine that people around the president are giving him honest advice and direct information on things that are happening.

24:32So yes, I think that that kind of targeting is obviously incredibly unfair to the people who are targeted, but it has a damaging effect throughout the government on how the government functions. Trump said he was going to go after Jack Smith and prosecute him for bringing the case in the first place. Do you feel reprisals yourself? No, I don't think about that. I really I think that there's no basis for any kind of reprisal or prosecution for the work that was done by the special counsel's office. And I'm not I'm not concerned about that. What about his actions related to private law firms? I'm thinking of Coop Perkins and others, maybe law firms that have worked for people who've, you know, been witnesses against him.

25:19And he's clearly trying to have control over government contracts and what they can and can't do and which buildings they can and can't enter. I mean, it feels like that is working now, right? It is shutting people down. Yes. And his targeting of private law firms is extraordinary because it is transparent and clear and not hidden at all that it is for personal reasons, for vengeance, as you say, against firms that employed critics of him, people who investigated him, who were witnesses against him, who targeted him, so forth, who were doing their jobs. And he has targeted, picked out those firms that he thinks are opposed to him.

26:10And some of the firms have caved in and some have fought back. Every firm that has fought back has won in court so far, because this is clearly unlawful to target a law firm for these kinds of consequences. And the consequences are severe for the firms just for personal reasons. You know, and the firms that have caved in, I think, are probably regretting that decision because partners are leaving those firms. Associates are also leaving those firms. And it's also not clear what it's won them because now the president thinks that he can direct his business to those firms, that those firms sort of work for him.

26:56And so I think this is a really, you know, shocking is a word that gets used a lot. And I wish we had another word, but it is shocking. You're at Harvard, where he's also threatened or has withdrawn funds. Columbia caved. He's also withholding funds there, to your point about who gives in and who doesn't. I mean, it sounds an odd question to ask, but does it matter to this administration whether something is legal or not? Well, that's a really good question, because it does seem that there are two things that come out of that. The first is that there is some method to the madness in the sense that the administration is clearly committed to expanding the powers of the executive.

27:47And they will be able to do that to some extent because the courts and certainly the Supreme Court are receptive to that. At the same time, the way they're going about this seems very chaotic and not particularly strategic, driven, as I said, by oftentimes by kind of vengeance and personal animus. And it seems that the administration is quite prepared to lose frequently in court. And I suppose it's because that's a cost that they're willing to bear. First, because even when they lose in court, they accomplish something. because oftentimes there are consequences for those that are targeted, even when the courts push back.

28:38And secondly, I think they have probably calculated that politically it's not damaging to take on these cases and lose them in court. I guess what you're starting to describe is a sort of patrimonial system whereby the person at the center, Trump, thinks of the state as essentially an extension of his own household or family, whereby the executive order can stretch because he sees himself as, you know, a sort of emperor-like figure, the person at the center. Do you think this way of governing is consistent with democracy? No, people, I think, have a sense. And I live in Boston, which is where the American Revolution started, right?