No dissent: Donald Trump's revenge tour

0:05Katy Balls: Hello and welcome to the State of It USA, the weekly podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times that dissects the remarkable goings on in today's America. I'm Gerry Baker. I'm editor at large of The Wall Street Journal and columnist for The Times.

0:20Gerard Baker: And I'm Katie Balls, Washington editor and columnist for The Times and Sunday Times.

0:24Katy Balls: This week, another lesson in the power that Donald Trump holds over the Republican Party. The message is, once again, from a round of elections, break with Donald Trump at your peril. Later, we'll try to make sense of a$1.776 billion fund that Donald Trump says is for victims of the weaponization of lawfare against particularly his supporters. Some people would argue that it's just a slush fund for those who've been accused of breaking the law in Donald Trump's defence. And we'll take a look at a time scoop this week about the sacking of Britain's deputy ambassador to Washington. Seems like that Washington embassy, Katie, is just one of life's most busy carousels.

1:12Katy Balls: Anyway, let's get straight into the topic of the week. We had a slew of primary elections on Tuesday in several key states. These, of course, are primary elections, elections that choose candidates for each party to be the candidate in the general election in November. There were several significant ones. Far and away, the one that got most attention and the most significant one was in the fourth congressional district of Kentucky, where Thomas Massey, it's fair to say a maverick, rebellious Republican who's been the congressman there for a very, very long time and has got himself absolutely crosswise with Donald Trump over the last couple of years, opposing Donald Trump on a whole range of matters.

1:53Katy Balls: He was facing a challenge in that Republican primary from a Donald Trump-backed candidate. And as Trump has shown again and again and again, Trump's candidate won, ousting Thomas Massey, showing the power once again of Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party, Even as his opinion poll ratings at large, with the nation continue to decline, his grip on the Republican Party, Katie, is as strong as ever, right?

2:22Gerard Baker: Yes. And this was one of a series of primaries which I think have formed part of a litmus test on Trump's hold in his party. Because, of course, if you look at the polling of the general public, the American people, Trump is struggling in some areas. his popularity has gone down. And this has made the Republicans pretty nervous about the midterms and the Democrats pretty confident, quietly confident. So the question was, are we about to see a fraying of the Republican Party? And instead, what we've had is what some in Trump circles have called the revenge tool, which is using these primaries to test the authority of Trump over the party.

3:00Gerard Baker: We had the Indiana votes a few weeks ago. That's all five of seven Indiana politicians who dared to go against Donald Trump on his redistrict plan, lose their seats. We then had the Republican Senator Bill Cassidy at the weekend, did not manage to make it through his primary. He didn't even get to the runoff point. And Bill Cassidy's big sin was to vote against Trump in an impeachment trial a few years ago.

3:26Katy Balls: It was after January the 6th. I mean, he was the One of the seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict wasn't enough to convict Donald Trump. But it was, yes, it was the after the January the 6th riot at the Capitol. Cassidy was one of them and paying the price.

3:40Gerard Baker: Exactly. And that is something that Donald Trump has not forgotten. And then, of course, you get to Thomas Massey. And I think in many ways this was the sweetest of all three when it came to what Donald Trump wanted to see. Thomas Massey has, you know, he's been a congressman for a long time. Probably the first signs of the fallout between the two, think about the COVID period, but particularly second term Trump, they disagreed on spending, they're around war, and particularly the Epstein files. It was Thomas Massey who teamed up with Ro Khanna, the Democratic congressman, to the Epstein Transparency Act, which ultimately forced the DOJ to release the files and forced Donald Trump into a rare U-turn.

4:19Gerard Baker: And they've been pouring money. This has been the most expensive primary, I think, in history. and Pete Hagsif went there to go and campaign. You've had Donald Trump on the Truth Social and as soon as the results came through this week and it was clear that Massey had been defeated, the cries from the White House and Donald Trump's close supporters were pretty loud saying, you know, faffo, F around and find out. And some say, oh, this is all Trump, you know, just trying to punish those. The White House view is that this is about party discipline and you have to count down on dissenters even if it does cost you quite a lot of money in the process.

4:54Katy Balls: Yeah, Trump's record of, as you say, the kind of revenge tour is extraordinarily impressive. This has mostly been about the January the 6th and the impeachment proceedings after what happened on January the 6th, 2021. There were 10 members of the House who voted to impeach him, and he went after each of those in their primaries. I think eight of them were defeated. I think they're pretty well all gone now. And then there were seven Republican senators who voted to convict him. And as you just said, Cassidy is the latest one of those. Mitt Romney was one. Ben Sasse was one. They've pretty well all gone too.

5:29Katy Balls: So the purge of anyone who dares to stand up to Donald Trump is more or less complete. And as I said, this happens, this happening at a time when the Republican Party more broadly is it's not popular and it's creating real problems, both, I think, electoral problems down the road for the party. And we'll see in November, obviously, the midterm elections could be creating immediate problems, too. One of the things, the other big news of the week in the same field, of course, Katie, was Donald Trump, even before he was fresh from his victory in the Kentucky primary election, Donald Trump on Tuesday coming out and endorsing Ken Paxton in the Texas Republican Senate primary against the incumbent senator John Cornyn.

6:14Katy Balls: Again, just for background, Texas is also a state that has, like Louisiana, that has a runoff system where the top two candidates from the first round go through to the final round. In the first round, John Cornyn and Ken Paxton, the former attorney general of Texas, were the two top candidates, and they go into the runoff, which is next Tuesday. Now, again, Cornyn is one of the most senior Republican senators around. He's a member of the Senate Republican leadership. He's been a very, very reliable conservative. He did not vote to convict Donald Trump back in 2021. He's been a pretty reliable supporter.

6:53Katy Balls: But he's been opposed by this guy, Paxton, who, I mean, to say that the man is a kind of a walking sort of miasma of scandal would be to understate it. He's got sort of extraordinary personal scandals related to his divorce from his wife. His wife has divorced him on quote-unquote biblical terms, accusing him of a string of affairs and of being – it's just an extraordinary figure. But, but, but, but, Paxton, the great redeeming feature of him in the Republican Party and the modern Republican Party is that he's a staunch supporter of Donald Trump Trump has criticised John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, for not being sufficiently supportive over some things about Trump wanted the Senate to move more quickly to pass legislation that he wanted.

7:38Katy Balls: And John Cornyn, being a kind of a longstanding senator, didn't want to do that. So now we're in this runoff. That will be next Tuesday. It's a very tight runoff. Paxton has seemed to have a slight lead in the polls. This, again, assuming Trump's hold is as strong as we have seen it elsewhere, this probably will tip the results to Paxton. And so that will mean Cassidy and Cornyn, two, again, reliable Republican senators, are basically now zombies. They'll be members of the Senate for the next eight months until the next Senate takes place. But assuming Cornyn loses, they won't have any particular obligation to the Republican Party.

8:13Katy Balls: And we're going to see and we're already seeing how that could cause real trouble for the Republicans because it's not exactly an act of bravery. But we're already seeing that these Republicans who've been ousted are – Bill Cassidy is the good example – are discovering a kind of courage that they didn't have before. Bill Cassidy immediately voted, having been, say, basically ousted at the weekend, and then immediately voted yesterday against Donald Trump on a war powers resolution over Iran, having previously supported them. So one of the concerns that I know Republicans have is that for the next for the rest of this congressional term, say, which goes through to January, you're going to have these Republicans hanging around who who don't have any incentive anymore whatsoever to be to be loyal to Donald Trump, along with a small handful of Republicans who have been disloyal to Donald Trump.

8:59Katy Balls: People like Susan Collins in Maine, she's facing a tough re-election fight. People like Rand Paul in Kentucky. So for the next eight months, you've got this. The Republicans, in effect, don't really have a working majority in the Senate. So the prospect of real kind of political disorder is pretty strong.

9:17Gerard Baker: We say they're finding, you know, their integrity and courage now is obviously quite easy to do that when you feel you have nothing to lose. But that's slightly the point. You mentioned Cassidy. I mean, he's also now been talking against the ballroom. So you're potentially going to have a couple of Republicans who feel there's no incentive. And there's also the question about, you know, what we've seen as a show of strength when it comes to Trump's grip on the party and the messages it sends. For example, if you go back to Massey, so some of the people who endorse Massey, you know, Tucker Carlson was very nice about him.

9:50Gerard Baker: It was almost becoming a primary where people were saying it was about the Israel question. I was speaking yesterday, last night, to a Massey supporter, and the result came through, and I said, you know, what do you think? And they said, I'm just reading the text, MAGA is dead, boomers will not stop ruining our country. Which, not that Thomas Massey is a Gen Z-er, but I think their point was that they think, you know, the old Republican Party, you know, is stopping people like Thomas Massey. You know, he was probably one of the most critical Israel voices, things on Epstein and things that they want to see more of.

10:28Gerard Baker: And, you know, all these voices have just been wiped out.

10:31Katy Balls: Yeah. Yeah. He's creating this again, this sort of battlefield strewn with with people who've opposed him, with the bodies of people who've opposed him that could create trouble. As you say, it's not exactly we're not exactly seeing profiles in courage here with these Republicans now suddenly liberated from the obligation to support Trump, suddenly discovering they've got a little bit of courage. It does rather remind me, and any staunch Anglican viewers and watchers are going to have to sort of swallow hard here when I say this, but it does remind me of the story of Archbishop Cranmer, who, of course, was a very aggressive hunter of Catholics under King Henry VIII and Edward VI, and very much responsible for the persecution of Catholics at that time.

11:12Katy Balls: Then Queen Mary came in, Bloody Mary came in and turned the tables, as it were. And Cramer immediately turned into a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church again in Queen Mary. And Queen Mary said, sorry, you know, you can support me all you like now, but actually you're out anyway. And of course, he ended up being burnt at stake in an Anglican martyr.

11:32Gerard Baker: Now, I do just wonder one thing, Gerry, on this, which is, do you think that obviously Trump has stamped his authority? Everyone is saying he is in control. Do you think the candidates that he is pushing through make a material difference when it comes to how the party is going to do in the midterms? Because, I mean, for example, I spent a bit of time in Texas recently. I met Ken Paxton briefly, spoke to him about the race. And that was at CPAC, which obviously is in some ways the conservative call, even if you say turning point, perhaps more reflective of MAGA, Charlie Kirkland organization. and speaking to people there and also just people from on my visit I mean there wasn't much excitement for John Cornyn and even in the pollings there is this idea oh John Cornyn would have been how the Republicans keep Texas Ken Paxton's too risky but I have to say I didn't find many people and perhaps CPAC wasn't the place but outside of CPAC too who were particularly animated by Cornyn

12:30Katy Balls: No it's true but it's not, you know obviously it's not the staunch Republicans that you're concerned about in Texas Look, again, this is a very good point. Donald Trump has in the past endorsed candidates who have turned out to be disastrous in general elections, most notably in Georgia, in the Senate elections six years ago. A bunch of other candidates who were just, you know, hardcore MAGA who were in swing states and who lost because voters didn't want to vote for hardcore MAGA types. Texas is really interesting. I mean, you have Texas is a has been traditionally a red state, but it's but it's narrow.

13:06Katy Balls: And with the collapse in support among Hispanics that they've already seen in Texas, which they have been seeing in some of these special elections and local elections as a result of the many Hispanics view as the overly aggressive immigration enforcement by Trump. as a general decline of Trump's approval ratings among independents takes hold, then the risk is that if they do go for a very hardcore MAGA candidate like Ken Paxton, particularly with all the baggage that he has, it really does make Texas very, very vulnerable. And he's up against a guy we've talked about before, Katie, that you've met, James Tallarico, the Democratic candidate.

13:45Katy Balls: So it really does raise the interesting possibility now that the Senate, which many people had thought for a long time was not really in play because the Democrats have to win four seats and there really weren't that many available on the map. It's now starting to look different. Texas could now be vulnerable. The polling suggests that the Republicans might well lose Maine. They're probably going to lose North Carolina. They could lose Alaska. They could lose Ohio. So you're starting to raise this interesting possibility. And just as an aside, meanwhile, the redistricting goes on in the House, making it tougher for the Democrats to take the House.

14:22Katy Balls: So we are in this sort of extraordinary, weird position where everybody's assumed all along that the Democrats were going to take the House and not take the Senate. We could now be in a situation where the opposite occurs. The Democrats, thanks to redistricting, Republicans are able to hang on in the House. But these Senate seats, of course, can't be redistricted thanks to Trump's unpopularity, thanks to some candidates like Paxton who may not be popular. the Senate could now be more vulnerable than the House. So we're going to have to see. It's going to be a fascinating few months. We'll take a break there.

14:51Katy Balls: When we come back, we're going to look at another big story this week, which is the creation of a fund of federal dollars to compensate victims of the weaponization of justice, being called a slush fund by Democrats. Republicans call it a necessary fund to restitute justice to those who've been unfairly treated. When we come back, we'll talk about that and more.

15:16Gerard Baker: So are you eligible for Donald Trump's slush fund? This week, we've had a furore in Washington, D.C. and beyond over the terms of a settlement for President Donald Trump's$10 billion lawsuit against the government. This is over the leak of his tax information and has resulted in a creation of an account which is meant to benefit those who are targets of weaponisation and lawfare. Quite quickly, this has become a political row, as there's been questions of who could benefit from the fund. Could it be members of Donald Trump's family? Could it be Jan Sixers? This is what happened when J.D. France was asked about it as he took his turn in the briefing room this week.

15:56Katy Balls: Republicans can apply for it. Democrats can apply for it. As you know, the President of the United States has pardoned a number of Democrats who he felt were actually subject to this lawfare. I mean, if Hunter Biden wants to apply for this particular fund, he is welcome to. Yeah, this is, you know, even by the standards of self-dealing that we've seen from the Trump administration, this is a pretty extraordinary measure, a pretty extraordinary idea. The fund grew out of a lawsuit that Trump filed against the IRS for leaking his tax returns, which did actually happen a few years ago when a leaker managed to get hold of his tax returns and handed them over to The New York Times.

16:38Katy Balls: He sued them, as you say, for that. And this is the settlement. The settlement has been struck. I mean, the first thing to say is it's a settlement between the president of the United States and his own government. So that, I think, sort of just straight off there tells you how dubious this is in ethical or indeed legal terms. The president sued his own government. And surprise, surprise, the government has decided to come up with a settlement, which ends up with Donald Trump getting a lot of money. Now, to be fair, again, let me make it clear, he's not taking any of the money himself. It's a fund, as you say, which everybody will be able to apply for compensation for what they regard as mistreatment by the government.

17:16Katy Balls: Now, there are definitely many cases where the government does mistreat people and go after people wrongly. But as you say, many of these, much of this is expected to be his supporters who were pursued by the federal government, maybe some of them too zealously. To be fair, there were hundreds and hundreds of prosecutions after January the 6th. Some people did think maybe some of them were treated a little unfairly. So, you know, maybe there's some justification there, but it's clearly another measure. Remember, he pardoned all those people who were sentenced for their crimes on January the 6th.

17:46Katy Balls: It's just another example of his attitude towards the law. And that is that support for Donald Trump trumps, if you forgive the pun, the rule of law and the notion of law. And whatever crime you may commit, if it's done in Donald Trump's name, you'll be compensated or pardoned or supported. It's just an extraordinary thing. And one other very quick thing that we should say about it is that as a sort of a coda to the settlement agreement, essentially lets Donald Trump and his family members off any possible audits by the IRS, any tax audits by the IRS. Now, we know that – by the way, one of the things we learned from those tax returns that were leaked to The New York Times is that Donald Trump basically paid no tax for years.

18:36Katy Balls: Now, legally, nobody is suggesting he did it unlawfully, but they were certainly – his tax affairs have certainly been investigated over a very long period of time. But this – part of the deal in this fund, this weaponization fund, is that he is now essentially exonerated or essentially immunized. he and his family, all his family members, against any audit, but from any outstanding audit from the IRS. So there's no way the IRS can reclaim the money. Even some pretty hardcore MAGA people that I've spoken to have had to swallow hard when hearing about this. But right now, yes, it's a fund basically for Donald Trump to pay large sums of money to his supporters out of taxpayers' money.

19:21Gerard Baker: Yeah, and I've been speaking to Republicans in D.C. this week about it. I've said, can you make the positive case on the slush fund and why it's a good idea? And you do get the sense they're contorting themselves to come up with a way to spin it. And one of the things is they're saying, well, Donald Trump could have taken the taxpayer for more money, because if we'd gone for the full settlement around this fund, that would have cost even more. And then secondly, saying, well, some of these people have really been wronged. If you look at how law forces have worked and therefore when it comes to the justice system, they're owed it.

19:54Gerard Baker: Now, it seems to all come down to this little panel, which will have about four or five people sitting on it who will decide where everything goes. And I mean, I guess one thing is, do you think there's any political merit in the Trump administration bringing back the story of Jan 6th when it comes to these individuals?

20:12Katy Balls: It's a very good question, Katie. And I think the answer is, yeah, I mean, I think I think this is what it's all about. You can look at what Trump is doing. Trump is governing essentially in the interests of MAGA supporters. You know, I'm not making an overly sort of political partisan point here, but he's fine with making this about compensating his own supporters and January 6th supporters in the same way that he was fine with pardoning them. He's fine with pursuing policies. He's fine with, you know, kicking out every Republican, as we discussed in the first section, who isn't a complete 100 percent with Donald Trump, because he knows that's where the energy is in the Republican Party.

20:52Katy Balls: I mean, we are, you know, the famous, famous remark from when he was running for president the first time I could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. That's his constituency. That's the people that he is essentially governing for now. that's where he is now. I mean, in his first year, I think with immigration, with the tax plans, and with some of the other things he was doing, he was kind of doing things that were popular. Now he's really, really seems to be very, very focused on feeding red meat to his core. And look, as we just said, in Kentucky and in Indiana and in Louisiana, it's paying off.

21:31Katy Balls: It is working for him because the Republican Party is being purged of anybody who is not a hardcore Donald Trump supporter. But yeah, the larger point is the more he alienates, you know, independent voters, his polling among independent voters right now is just in the basement. Voters give him a 30 percent approval rating on the handling of prices because, you know, we've seen prices going through the roof. Interest rates are going through the roof as financial markets get more and more nervous about what's going on there. So for the wider electorate, for the wider public, Trump doing things like this, not only are they not gaining benefit from it, but they also are seeing a president who seems to be completely focused on, A, enriching himself, and B, feeding his own supporters the things that they want.

22:21Gerard Baker: Now, in other news, Gerry, we have more drama here in Washington, D.C. at the British Embassy, which I'm not sure if we can say the British embassy is cursed yet but it certainly seems to be having its fair share of scandal. The ghost of Peter Madison still looms large over the government back in Westminster and the ambassadors here in DC. Every time the new ambassador, Christian Turner, gives an event there normally tends to be something happening around Mandelson which makes it awkward. You have Christian Turner who during the state visit of the king recently to DC had comments he made to school children, never worked with children or animals, effectively leaked to the FT for maximum impact, in which he talked about this idea that the only special relationship the US had was with Israel.

23:11Gerard Baker: And actually speaking to figures involved in that trip, I think that while everyone put a brave face on it, I think that did cause some tension between the two sides. And I don't think the US were particularly impressed at this leak when, you know, Donald Trump was doing everything in his best behaviour, looking forward to the kink being here. And then we had the news this week, first reported by Gabriel Pogrand that James Orozco, who is the second most senior diplomat at the DC embassy, has abruptly left the post. Staff were told really in a one-sentence email that he was left. We don't know the exact reason for his departure.

23:49Gerard Baker: Something that we've reported in The Times this week is we understand that there has been an ongoing leak inquiry into a National Security Council leak about discussions on the Iran wall and that we are told that Roscoe was among British embassy officials who were interviewed about this leak. Again, we don't yet have the official. We just know that he has left. And this was Roscoe who stood in as a temporary ambassador during that period when Peter Manderson had to leave and before they selected a successor. So potentially another strain when it comes to, you know, what is really supposed to be the top diplomatic spot doing some of the key work of a pretty fractured UK-US relationship at the moment.

24:33Katy Balls: Yeah, I was fascinated by this story. And again, as you say, we don't know the details, although, Katie, I know you've done some reporting on this. It maybe does seem, again, I don't know, but from some of the reporting I've seen does seem to maybe relate to leaks from a National Security Council meeting at Downing Street in which, about the Iran war, in which various of the leading members of the government offered their differing opinions on what the UK should do in Iran. This is incredibly damaging, obviously, to the government, if that's what it is about, if it revealed, as it seemed to, some differences of opinion within the government about how to handle Iran.

25:13Katy Balls: And as you say, it is damaging in terms of the relationship with the Trump administration. Let's be the first to say that the Trump administration is not exactly in a very strong position to point the finger at other governments for leaking important information. And when we are now seeing, especially over the Iran war, this administration is leaking like a sieve. Just as an aside, my favorite story that we've had so far appeared yesterday, and credit to them in The New York Times, which revealed that in the planning, the initial stages of the planning for the attack on Iran, the U.S. and Israel had lighted on a plan to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president, as their man in the regime change plan, which, you know, is, if anybody remembers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he's the man who wants to wipe every Jew off the face of the earth, who was one of the most virulently outspoken of people against the United States when he was president a few years ago.

26:20Katy Balls: So this idea that the US is going to install him, which has now been leaked, has raised a few eyebrows. So look, accusing other countries of, you know, not being able to keep secrets or whatever is damaging. But it is, look, this is important. The relationship between the UK and the US for all the peril that I think it's been in over the last few months in particular over Iran, it remains, it does remain important and it remains important, particularly, I've got some contacts in this field, in the intelligence sharing field. There is still a very, very close relationship between the UK intelligence arms and the US intelligence arms, and they do work very closely together.

26:56Katy Balls: And, you know, there's been talk on and off about nervousness on the British side about sharing intelligence with the US because of, especially over things like Russia, because of the sense that Trump is Trump's proximity to Vladimir Putin. But nonetheless, the relationship has continued to work. But if things like this are leaked, that's going to risk harm to that really important intelligence relationship, important as much for the UK, obviously more for the UK than it is probably for the US.

27:23Gerard Baker: Yeah, and I think there is just a sense when you have obviously the UK government in disarray at the moment. It does just mean it's harder to have that relationship with the US. For example, there was recently a leak of a meeting between Rachel Reeves and Scott Besson about the pair clashing over the Iran war. And at least the American interpretation when you speak to people here is they feel that is a UK side leak. It went to a journalist based in the UK. and you also have the fact that they're not sure how long Keir Starmer's going to be here. Then you have the dysfunction of the now series of dip the mats at the British Embassy for various reasons, things going to the press when it comes to those leaked comments by Christian Turner and so forth.

28:05Gerard Baker: And I think it does just mean it feels harder to have those serious conversations and to also have the motivation to really keep going on some of the shared interests when they think, you know, unreliable and leaky.

28:19Katy Balls: Yeah, well, I was going to say that, you know, having a senior job in the British embassy in Washington seems to be about as secure and long-term a proposition as being British Prime Minister at the moment.

28:29Gerard Baker: Now, before we go, there's a Times event that you might enjoy if you're listening to this podcast. To mark 250 years of the Declaration of Independence, The Sunday Times associate editor Josh Glancy and panelists Adam Smith and Sarah Churchwell examine the modern reality of the American dream. and ask what the next century holds for the world's defining superpower. It's in London on July 9th, and for tickets, just go to thetimes.com forward slash events.

28:56Katy Balls: Thanks very much indeed for joining us, and Katie, have a good weekend, and we'll see you all next week.