The Bulwark is home to Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol, JVL, Sam Stein, and more. We are the largest pro-democracy bundle on Substack for news and analysis on politics and cultureāsupported by a community built on good-faith.
Programming note: on todayās podcast (which will posted this afternoon), Iāll chat with Punchbowlās Jake Sherman, who broke the story about Kevin McCarthyās plans on the debt crisis and aid to Ukraine.
And, a reminder that tomorrow night weāll all be in D.C. for a live Bulwark event with special guest, Officer Michael Fanone, one of the heroes of January 6th, followed by a live panel with Sarah, Tim, and Amanda. Bill will be our MC⦠Stay tuned for upcoming events.
Morning Shots is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
We already knew that a GOP-controlled House would mean:
Endless investigations (starting with Hunter Biden)ā¦
Votes to impeach Joe Biden for TBD. (Even though McCarthy says he doesnāt think itās a good idea, he might not be able resist the pressure, becauseā¦)
All of this was known. But yesterday, the Man Who Would Be Speaker added a few wrinkles. In an interview with Punchbowl, McCarthy:
āSignaled that additional aid to Ukraine, now in the ninth month of war with Russia, is unlikely if Republicans have a House majority,ā andā¦
Threatened to hold the debt ceiling hostage next year, which, the Wapoās Catherine Rampell warns ācould easily precipitate a global financial catastrophe.ā
McCarthy explained to Punchbowl how the GOP might play chicken with the debt ceiling:
āYou canāt just continue down the path to keep spending and adding to the debt. And if people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, okay, weāll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior. Weāre not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right? And we should seriously sit together and [figure out] where can we eliminate some waste? Where can we make the economy grow stronger?ā
We reminded McCarthy that he didnāt pitch these debt limit battles during the Trump era, during which the GOP ran up $7 trillion in new debt in only four years, including pandemic relief funding. Congress raised the debt ceiling three times during Trumpās presidency. Republicans only hold the borrowing cap hostage when Democrats are in the White House. McCarthy countered that President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have spent too much money, in his view.
A quick reminder that the debt ceiling has nothing to do with spending; itās about paying for what weāve already spent.The Wapoās Rampell compares the refusal to raise the debt ceiling to āgoing to a restaurant, ordering the lobster and a $500 bottle of wine, and then declaring yourself financially responsible because you skipped out on the check.ā
āActually,ā she writes, āitās worse than that.ā
If lawmakers dine-and-dash on behalf of Uncle Sam, they tarnish the creditworthiness of the United States and can make it more expensive for the federal government to borrow in the future because investors donāt trust us. Worse, they might accidentally blow up every other financial market on Earth, too.
Thatās because U.S. debt is now viewed as the safest of safe assets. Virtually all other assets around the world are benchmarked against U.S. Treasury securities. If we default on our debt obligations ā or even come close to default ā that raises the question of the riskiness of everything else investors buy and can send shockwaves of panic through every other market.
Boom, financial crisis.
And, while McCarthy is vague about his policy demands, his caucus of bomb-throwers is less reticent.
In a Bloomberg Government article last week, the four Republican lawmakers interested in serving as House Budget Committee chairman in the next Congress all said theyād refuse to raise the debt ceiling next year unless Democrats agree to entitlement cuts and work requirements on safety-net programs ā that is, measures Dems would find abhorrent. This would set the stage for another high-stakes showdownā¦.
Writes Rampell:
Forcing a debt limit crisis, as the world teeters on the verge of recession, is the opposite of what you would pursue if you care about strengthening the economy. But no matter: Just look at the context-free polls! Surely, under GOP stewardship, the economy will be in good hands.
**
And then there was Ukraine. McCarthy told Punchbowl that āgetting additional aid from the House for Ukraine would be difficult. ā
āI think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and theyāre not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just wonāt do it. ⦠Itās not a free blank check. And then thereās the things [the Biden administration] is not doing domestically. Not doing the border and people begin to weigh that. Ukraine is important, but at the same time it canāt be the only thing they do and it canāt be a blank check.ā
In signaling the possible abandonment of Ukraine, McCarthy is echoing a common theme in right-wing media circles and among MAGA candidates like J.D. Vance, Blake Masters, et al. And the central dynamic of a McCarthy speakership will be his utter inability to defy the GOPās new id. MTG made that abundantly clear to the NYTās Robert Draper in his fantastic new book,Weapons of Mass Delusion:
In Greeneās view, a Speaker McCarthy would have little choice but to adopt Greeneās āa lot more aggressiveā approach toward punishing Biden and his fellow Democrats for what she sees as their policy derelictions and for conducting a āwitch huntā against former President Trump. āI think that to be the best speaker of the House and to please the base, heās going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway,ā she predicted in a flat, unemotional voice. āAnd if he doesnāt, theyāre going to be very unhappy about it. I think thatās the best way to read that. And thatās not in any way a threat at all. I just think thatās reality.ā
Obviously that applies not just to the investigations, impeachments, and assorted crazy stuff that the fever swamps will demand, but also to the likelihood that McCarthy would trigger a debt crisis and cut off Ukraine.
So, what we have here is McCarthy telegraphing two possible ā and quite plausible ā policy disasters.
But, but butā¦. they can both be averted by the lame duck Congress. As Jake Sherman notes, the Biden Administration and Congress could avoid the debt crisis by extending the limit through 2024.
And McCarthyās threat to tank Ukraine aid, ācould prompt the Biden administration to push for a full year of Ukraine aid during the lame duck, should Republicans win control of either chamber. McCarthy may privately welcome this, in fact."
Durhamās Epic Fail
So many hopes, so much hype, so little to show for it. Via the Wapo:
Trump predicted [special counsel John] Durham would uncover āthe crime of the centuryā inside the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies that investigated his campaignās links to Russia. But so far,no one charged by the special counsel has gone to prison, and only one government employee has pleaded guilty to a criminal offense. In both trials this year, Durham argued that people deceived FBI agents, not that investigators corruptly targeted Trump.
Igor Danchenko, an analyst who provided much of the research for a notorious dossier of unproven assertions and rumors about former President Donald J. Trump and Russia, was acquitted on Tuesday on four counts of lying to the F.B.I. about one of his sources.
The verdict was a final blow to the politically charged criminal investigation by John H. Durham, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr three years ago to scour the F.B.I.ās inquiry into the Trump campaignās ties to Russia for any wrongdoing.
But, as David Corn reports, it was even worse than that. During the trial, he writes, Durham ended up presenting āevidence that blew up Trumpās claims of a Deep State conspiracy and that even undermined Durhamās own Trump-friendly statement.ā
[When] Auten was on the stand, Durham asked him about the origins of the FBIās Russia probe. As CNN reported, āAuten confirmed what has been known for many years: the probe was launched after the US government got intelligence from a friendly country that a Trump campaign aide had bragged to one of its diplomats that the Russians had offered to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton.ā CNN added:
The situation was all the more interesting because Trump has repeatedly acted as a cheerleader for Durham and has said Durham will validate his suspicions about massive government misconduct regarding the Russia probe. On Tuesday, Durham inadvertently affirmed a basic truth about the Russia probe that Trump has lied about for years.
Read that again. Durham, the last great hope of Trump and all the Russian-hoax hoaxers, presented evidence that blew up Trumpās claims of a Deep State conspiracy and that even undermined Durhamās own Trump-friendly statement. It was almost as if Durham was waving a white flag of surrenderā¦.
For years, Trump has claimed that he was the target of a phony investigation concocted by the Deep State. Barr essentially appointed Durham to find evidence of this. And Durham publicly suggested in 2019 that he had unearthed information that backed the notion that something was fishy about the origins of the FBIās probe. Yet in what seems to be the final prosecution of his investigation, Durham produced testimony that supports the opposite and debunks Trumpās Big Lie about the Russia investigation. Oops?
A (fired) NYT editor has some things to say
You may remember the story. In 2020, the NYT published an op ed by Tom Cotton (R-AR), that called for sending the military into cities to suppress riots that had broken out after the murder of George Floyd. After an internal uproar over the decision to give Cotton a platform, the paperās opinion editor, James Bennet, was unceremoniously defenestrated.
Now, in his first published comments since his ouster, Bennet is blasting his old paper. In a conversation with Semafor co-founder Ben Smith, Bennet describes how the Times āset me on fire and threw me in the garbage.ā
Itās pretty remarkable stuff.
The former Opinion Editor and onetime heir apparent to run the Times spoke to me Saturday in his first on-the-record interview about the episode.
Bennet believes that Sulzberger, the publisher, āblew the opportunity to make clear that the New York Times doesnāt exist just to tell progressives how progressives should view reality. That was a huge mistake and a missed opportunity for him to show real strength,ā he said. āHe still could have fired me.ā
āMy regret is that editorās note. My mistake there was trying to mollify people,ā he said.
The Times and its publisher, Bennet said, āwant to have it both ways.ā Sulzberger is āold schoolā in his belief in a neutral, heterodox publication. But āthey want to have the applause and the welcome of the left, and now thereās the problem on top of that that theyāve signed up so many new subscribers in the last few years and the expectation of those subscribers is that the Times will be Mother Jones on steroids.ā
Itās working. Once ahead in the polls, Democrat Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, is now trailing Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in the stateās race for U.S. Senate, a shift also seen recently in other important races. One factor is an onslaught of negative messaging that seeks to paint Barnes as a crime-loving radical. A key word here is āpaint.ā
One of the ads, from the National Republican Senate Committee, ends with a shot that brands Barnes, who is black, as ādifferentā and ādangerousā as it pictures him alongside three congresswomen of color who are members of āThe Squad,ā none of whom has campaigned with him. For good measure, the state Republican party sent out a mailer in which the color of Barnesās skin has clearly been darkened. Hereās a side-by-side comparison that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
A side-by-side comparison published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Iāve had more than one acquaintance tell me I shouldnāt respond to Michael Antonās recent over-the-top takedown of several āformer friends,ā including Gabe Schoenfeld, Bill Kristol, Christian Vanderbrouk, Charlie Sykes, Jonathan Last, and me. The advice is sensible. If the response comes off as defensive, it runs a risk of giving the author the satisfaction of knowing he struck a nerve. The response might also end up confirming the charges in the eyes of readers who were predisposed to side with the accuser. Then thereās the fact that Antonās piece was published in American Greatness, a marginal pro-Trump website. Why risk bringing his claims to a wider audience?
Despite these reasonable concerns, Iāve nonetheless decided to go forward with writing a responseāfor three main reasons. First, because Anton is a former member of the Trump National Security Council and will be on a short list for a top job the next time a Republican wins the White House, making him a pretty powerful guy who shouldnāt be spreading calumnies uncontested. Second, because Antonās account of our past interactions is riddled with errors that I would like to correct in the public record.
All these years later, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how GOP voters can be so obsessed about keeping on a budget and creating a lean and mean federal government grounded in sound business principles when Democrats are in power, yet when Republicans are in charge they cannot implement enough tax cuts to deprive even a leaner and meaner government of necessary operating revenue and don't mind spending like drunken sailors on causes that are near and dear to their own hearts.
Exhibit A: Congressional investigations. They cost money. They expend valuable work time. And said time and money are utilized better elsewhere for the taxpayers footing the bill than on a vengeance-based agenda grounded in the flimsiest of rationales: just because we can. Bonus take: they are an embarrassment in the eyes of outsiders who still view American prestige as something earned rather than something declared, and who are not interested in seeing us air our dirty laundry for political purposes instead of being a leader in important international affairs (see Exhibit B: Ukraine).
Somebody please connect the dots for me on how and why Republican voters both support this hypocritical agenda, rather gleefully in fact, and turn a willful blind eye toward the gross and obvious amount of cognitive dissonance involved. My BS detector has broken from all of the stress and strain, and frankly I lack both the talent and the patience anymore to understand how so many adults can position themselves to be like little children trying to convince their parents that some other kid always is the one who started the playground fight.
I'm pretty sure Kevin isn't going to be the Speaker, which is going to make watching him realize he sold his soul for nothing the only good part of a potential GOP House majority.
All these years later, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how GOP voters can be so obsessed about keeping on a budget and creating a lean and mean federal government grounded in sound business principles when Democrats are in power, yet when Republicans are in charge they cannot implement enough tax cuts to deprive even a leaner and meaner government of necessary operating revenue and don't mind spending like drunken sailors on causes that are near and dear to their own hearts.
Exhibit A: Congressional investigations. They cost money. They expend valuable work time. And said time and money are utilized better elsewhere for the taxpayers footing the bill than on a vengeance-based agenda grounded in the flimsiest of rationales: just because we can. Bonus take: they are an embarrassment in the eyes of outsiders who still view American prestige as something earned rather than something declared, and who are not interested in seeing us air our dirty laundry for political purposes instead of being a leader in important international affairs (see Exhibit B: Ukraine).
Somebody please connect the dots for me on how and why Republican voters both support this hypocritical agenda, rather gleefully in fact, and turn a willful blind eye toward the gross and obvious amount of cognitive dissonance involved. My BS detector has broken from all of the stress and strain, and frankly I lack both the talent and the patience anymore to understand how so many adults can position themselves to be like little children trying to convince their parents that some other kid always is the one who started the playground fight.
I'm pretty sure Kevin isn't going to be the Speaker, which is going to make watching him realize he sold his soul for nothing the only good part of a potential GOP House majority.