Three Opinion Writers on Whether Congress Can Rein in Trump

16:55David French:Oh, the victims had Nancy Mace, the Republican congresswoman, in tears.

16:59Jamelle Bouie:Right, but there are literally hundreds more victims beyond those that testified. There is all these unanswered questions about the president's relationship with Epstein previously. I mean, this is gonna be a thing the White House is gonna have to deal with. It cannot wave this away or distract this away, right? They can try to instigate a war with Venezuela, which they're doing, and this will still be something they have to account for. You know, I stand by the way I assessed this at the beginning, which is this is a bit of a problem for Trump, but he's still going to keep his hold. But what's really interesting about Epstein to me is what does this mean for MAGA more broadly?

17:46Michelle Cottle:because all of the conversation right now, and it's super understandable because we're less than a year in to this second term. Gosh, less than a year in to the second term. Let's just say that again. Stop. That all of the conversation or 90 % of it is really focused on what does this mean for Donald Trump? And I'm of the opinion that, look, we've been through this about the, every scandal that arises so far doesn't dent Trump with the Republican base including January 6th, including in the days right after January 6th. McConnell's approval rating plummeted and Pence's approval rating plummeted with Republicans and not Trump's.

18:27Michelle Cottle:But I think what's really interesting about this is the divisions it's exposing in MAGA. And we've seen a lot of divisions arising in MAGA in the last two to three months. Do you bomb Iran? Do you not bomb Iran? And so I'm very interested about what the Epstein files represent going forward as far as what is MAGA? What is this thing after Donald Trump is gone? Because it looks to me like you have unity around Trump, but you have disunity just spreading across the rest of the Republican coalition on multiple important fronts. And I think Trump has kind of kept the lid on this coalition and that when Trump is gone and you lift the lid, it is anybody's ballgame at that point as to which faction emerges, how much can this sort of bag of scorpions stay together.

19:22Michelle Cottle:And I think the Epstein incident is sort of a leading edge indicator of that.

19:26David French:So in terms of damage, like enduring damage, is it worse if the files come out? Obviously, we don't know what's in them. Like if there was something like that blew up, that would be one thing. Or if they continue to hide them and feed that suspicion that they used and exploited so well for so many years. And this is all assuming that it's not in there, that Trump did something truly illegal and appalling.

19:52Jamelle Bouie:I mean, that's the thing. If there's something in there, then, I mean, obviously that's the thing that's more damaging. But even then, I feel like in the history of American scandals, it's worse for it to be a steady drip, right? I mean, that's honestly kind of Trump's ability to withstand scandal has a lot to do with the fact that it's never been a steady trip. It's always been right in your face. He's always been quite unapologetic about it. And that kind of short circuits not just the public's response to scandal, but also the press's response to scandal, where there isn't a story to follow over time, but just like one thing.

20:27Jamelle Bouie:And even if it isn't dislodging Trump's base from him, it is certainly harming his approval with like the rest of the country. And I find myself saying it's important to remember, right, that Trump lost about half the voting public in last year's election, started off his administration relatively unpopular for a new president, and has only dipped below that since then. And although Trump may not believe that he has to maintain any particular standing with the public, I think it is true that the worse they perform with the overall public, just the weaker their position is.

21:10David French:Well, he's a very special boy, but his congressional members are not necessarily, right? Right. Yes. And how much of a problem is it for Congress that they've just basically, you know, except for a handful of members on the Republican side, they just basically lay down in the street and they're like, yeah, just we'll take whatever kind of nonsense you're going to spout about this. And we're not going to demand anything even after years of you saying, oh, I'm going to release everything. That's got to make Congress cannot reflect well on the Congress.

21:43Michelle Cottle:You raise a great point, and that is MAGA is making a huge mistake if it thinks that it and all of its members are as Teflon as Donald Trump is. Because what we have seen time and time and time again is that when the primaries produce MAGA candidates in swing states, and when I say MAGA candidate, I mean somebody who's sort of all in on Trumpism, doesn't have much normie Republican in them at all. The record there is pretty grim. But one other thing you said, you said it, Jamel said it, that drip, drip, drip, as Jamel was saying, like is really, really important for people understanding that something is a problem.

22:21Michelle Cottle:It's bad. It takes a while for it to seep into the system. And then if the drip, drip, drip is followed by a big reveal, that's the most catastrophic kind of scandal. But what Trump does, if I mean, if I can be a little crude, if we remember the drip, drip, drip of the Lewinsky scandal culminated in the blue dress. Right. Yeah. And so then all of a sudden, Clinton's lie was exposed, et cetera. Trump runs around in public wearing the blue dress like there's no drip, drip, drip. His corruption is just right there. It is just out there. And I think there is this interesting thing where the public, it's like if they're not trying to hide it, it doesn't feel corrupt to people.

23:07Michelle Cottle:Does that make sense? In other words, if I'm just— No, I think that's absolutely right.

23:09David French:Maybe it feels like reality TV on some level. I just think that he operates on such different standards and people are like, oh, it's just Trump, you know, playing a role.

23:20Jamelle Bouie:I think that's right. I don't think it's just the public. I think it's the press, too. I honestly think that Trump being so openly corrupt basically recalibrates everyone's expectations about what is normal behavior. And so this is not Epstein, but right, like the Trump family has made like five billion dollars on some crypto coin. And it's like that's that's so wildly corrupt. Like corrupt doesn't even feel like the right word for it.

23:45David French:It's insanely corrupt. Yeah. But everybody just nods.

23:47Jamelle Bouie:And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah. He's a great businessman. Right. And it just recalibrates expectations. And part of it is that Trump himself does not behave as if he has anything to hide. And Epstein is sort of the one time where he is acting as if he has something to hide.

24:03David French:They all look very shifty. But all of this speaks again to what we were talking about, which is that Congress has basically just abdicated another area of its responsibility, which is accountability for the executive branch.

24:16Michelle Cottle:Can I ask you all a question? Yeah. This is a question I've been asking myself. Should we cover Congress less? Okay, and here's what I mean.

24:24David French:Because it doesn't matter anymore?

24:25Michelle Cottle:Correct. Okay, so how many resources do you think the typical large-scale media operation dedicates to covering Congress versus the courts? Which one of those two branches is actually doing work that's more relevant to people? It's the courts, right? It's the courts. Right now, I fear that a lot of the attention we're pouring into Congress is fueling congressional dysfunction in this sense that a lot of those guys are now being elected and they view their job as I'm just a pundit. I'm a spokesperson for the cause.

24:59David French:Oh, 130%. I had just talked to a bunch of senators and it's not even the way it used to be where you've got a basic kind of timeline where you're performing over weeks or months. It's like they're operating on a social media, quick hits. They're gonna have two seconds of fame on this and three seconds on that, and they're going to get a beat down on Twitter if they don't. It's insane. And they're all excruciatingly aware of it.

25:26Jamelle Bouie:I see your point, David. I think that every mainstream media organization could stop covering Congress the way it has, and this would still be a problem in part because for Republicans at least, that's not the media ecosystem they necessarily care about. Oh, yeah. It's not the media they care about. It's Fox. It's OAN. OAN. Twitter. It's Twitter. it's all of that.

25:49David French:The podcasters, the radio.

25:51Jamelle Bouie:It's the ability to parlay, right? Like some notoriety as a congressman into a podcast where you sell, you know, like brain supplements. Michelle, you said earlier, just a minute ago, that Congress isn't even doing its role of providing accountability. This might feel like a little esoteric, but I increasingly feel that that kind of language about Congress is itself reflective of part of our larger problem when it comes to Congress, which is that like in the constitutional text, Congress's job isn't to provide accountability for the executive branch. It's to lead the government. Like that's Congress's job.

26:30Jamelle Bouie:Congress, and I think in a fair reading of the text, is the leading branch of the government. And arguably it is the job of the court and of the executive to bound in Congress somewhat by design, right? Congress can do all these things. And there's scholarship on notions of what enumerated power is and what that's inclusive of and whether, in fact, that Congress by the text has a much broader set of powers than even we traditionally understand. And the text suggests that Congress is just as dominant and domineering institution that itself has to be bound in by other actors. But we, not just because of Trump, but for the last half century, have existed in a world where it's the president that leads the government.

27:18Jamelle Bouie:And yeah, Congress exists to put limits on executive authority. And I think Congress people have internalized that idea as well, that their job is not so much to lead the nation, but to be kind of like a support position for the executive branch. And so all of that has like left us with the situation where you have a Congress right now that because it sees itself in a support role has effectively like dissolved itself for all intents and purposes and has abdicated most of its authority to the presidency. And there doesn't appear to me to be any countervailing force, right? Like, nerds like me will complain about it, right?

28:02Jamelle Bouie:But like, can anyone like imagine a future Congress that says to itself, you know, irrespective of who the president is, we have all this power and we want to use it. We have all these resources to become, you know, individual members can learn a great deal. And we're not that far removed from a time when individual members weren't just doing TV hits, but we're like actual experts on actual issues and capable of like writing complicated and complex legislation. Are we ever going to get to a point where members of Congress, the typical member of Congress, sees themselves as someone doing an actual job that requires expertise that they're going to build versus where we are now, where it's sort of like, yeah, we're just junior partners to whoever's in the White House.

28:50Michelle Cottle:To be very clear, I am not at all saying don't cover Congress, but I'm saying we have a massive imbalance right now. You can have a member of Congress who's walking through the halls of Capitol Hill and they got a gaggle around them of media, right? And yet, if I was going to describe to an average American who is more powerful, who has more influence over your life, is it one of these cast of congressional characters or is it the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals? It's the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by 5 ,000 miles, and nobody knows who that is, okay? And so what we're doing with following these people around, hanging on their every word, listening to them, writing news stories about their stupid posts, is that we are contributing to it.

29:37Michelle Cottle:You know, I've reached a point, like, I'm not even exaggerating. If I'm at dinner and I meet a bunch of people from different walks of life, one person's an accountant, one person's a lawyer, somebody's a construction worker, somebody's, you name it. And one of the people on the introduces themselves, I'm a member of Congress, Republican member of Congress from your district. He is immediately the least interesting person to me at the table. I'm not joking. Like, that sounds weird.

30:05David French:That is so harsh.

30:05Michelle Cottle:He's the least interesting person because I'm looking at somebody who in many ways is a non-entity, as a separate human professional being. They are an extension of somebody else. That's Donald Trump.

30:21David French:So, Jamel, you were talking about the power that they used to have and that they haven't wielded in decades. This is not all about Donald Trump. So I always like to point out that this was a big crusade for someone who has studied this in the Senate a great deal over the years, whose father used to argue before the Supreme Court all the time, and that is Senator Mike Lee. Senator Mike Lee had an Article I crusade right before the 2016 election because he saw Hillary Clinton coming to some degree, and he was trying to scare his Republican colleagues into clawing back. Now, I have made very clear over the years that Mike Lee has been a big disappointment in terms of his just complete giving up and bowing before Trump.

31:14Jamelle Bouie:I mean, he's a crank now.

31:16David French:He is someone who, when you mention his name, people roll their eyes because whatever he stood for, he has essentially put that on the back burner to keep Trump happy. But yes, there tend to be occasional members that pop up and want to do this, but then it kind of runs counter to their partisan interests and they'll abandon it.

31:38Jamelle Bouie:I don't think it's going to be something that comes from individual members. It's really, it has to be like a sea change in attitudes within an entire political party, right? Like it has to be the partisan project of a political party. And I can kind of envision a pathway to it, right? Like if one of the stories of this administration, it's just like the destruction of the administrative state and the gutting of the federal bureaucracy. It's simply the case that liberals, progressives, whatever you want to call them, have like a vested interest in rebuilding the administrative state and rebuilding the federal bureaucracy.

32:11Jamelle Bouie:And that might encourage some creative thinking about the role of Congress in reconstituting both of those things. And that's not something that can really come from the executive branch. It has to come from Congress.

32:24Michelle Cottle:I'm in 100 % agreement with Jamel. Individual members of the Senate, for example, are not going to be able to shift the course of this train. What I'm afraid of is that we're going to have a situation where the natural consequences of this administration's policies and Congress's abdication of its authority are going to play out in ways that ultimately end up being profoundly negative for the United States of America. in the resulting sort of blowback, you're gonna have an opportunity for Congress institutionally to rediscover itself. Because this very close 50-50, 51-49, 49-51 arrangement is not the norm throughout American history.

33:07Michelle Cottle:We go through periods where we do have these close divisions, but then usually the log jam is broken and one party will be the dominant party for a generation or more. I mean, we have seen this happen. Think after Watergate. After Watergate and the Nixon imperial presidency, you had, for a very brief period of time, a lot of congressional reforms hemming the president back in. A logjam was broken and you had some real reform. And so I think one eye, we have to have part of ourselves absolutely focused on containing the constitutional damage that Trump is doing. But another eye, he has broken so many things that there is going to be a rebuild task.

33:50Michelle Cottle:How do you rebuild? What is the vision for rebuilding? And I would say if the vision for rebuilding doesn't involve structural reforms to revive Congress, we're just going to be doing a repeat play of this awful tragedy that we've been enduring again and again and again.

34:09David French:Okay, so we've got a waste no crisis philosophy here. I like this. Everybody agrees it's going to have to do something bigger than what we've been looking at. I don't want to leave everybody on a despondent, despairing note. So before we go, I want you guys to bring us all back from the holiday and roll us into the kind of encroaching fall with a recommendation. Give us something that you're enjoying right now that you want people, you want to share with people out there.

34:40Jamelle Bouie:Sure. Where I live, it's fall festival season. Sweet. It officially started. We went to one, the family, on this past weekend. They had sunflowers to pick. that had an apple cannon, like a cannon to shoot apples out of. That was pretty cool. And I'm just going to recommend that people go to fall festivals at nearby farms or whatever. They're good fun. Nice way to spend usually a Saturday or Sunday outside, nice weather, enjoying the company of other people. And hopefully there's some kind of gun that shoots fruit, which is pretty cool.

35:13David French:I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival a couple of weeks ago and it was magic, but there was no fruit being shot. I now feel cheated.

35:20Jamelle Bouie:Yeah, this was great. It was in actual Canon with like sights and you put an apple in it and you could shoot it. And like the velocity was quite intense. I definitely spent 20 bucks and a lot of time shooting apples at a rusty car.

35:36David French:Okay, David?

35:37Michelle Cottle:That's a great recommendation. But my recommendation involves not getting off your couch because it is streaming and it is Foundation on Apple TV+. us. Season three came out, but it is loosely based on Isaac Asimov's books, classic science fiction books set very far in the future. And the basic storyline is a mathematician using extremely advanced mathematical techniques has been able to predict the future course of the galaxy. And he is predicting the fall of the empire, the galactic empire in horrific chaos, darkness, awfulness as it falls. This may be too close to reality.

36:18David French:I'm sorry.

36:19Michelle Cottle:No, it is close to reality, except there's some interesting, yeah, you can see echoes, but it's true sci-fi. But anyway, he forms a foundation, hence the name Foundation. It was a collection of people, and their mission is to shorten the darkness. If they can't stop the fall of the empire, what they need to do is make the empire's fall less horrific and the period of anarchy and chaos shorter. So they want to shorten the darkness. And I've often thought of that in connection with how do you respond to this Trump era? We can't stop the darkness. He won, right? But you can shorten the darkness. And so it's a lot of fun.

37:01David French:Okay. So I'm going to kind of go off and recommend a little weird reading, which is I was a teenage slasher and I'm just going to come right out and say that as the summer comes to an end I'm loathe to give up my kind of trashy beach reading and this is kind of a comedy horror book about it plays off like movies like Cabin in the Woods or Scream that get at the tropes of horror movies except the narrator is basically turning into a slasher and so for those of you who need a little escape I recommend picking it up. Incredibly fast, fun read. Okay. Well, I think that's it, guys. As always, thank you very much.

37:46David French:We'll do this again with whatever hell comes down the pike next week. Thanks, Jamel. Thanks, Michelle.

37:51Jamelle Bouie:Always a pleasure.

38:36David French:Transcription by CastingWords music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.