Hi, and welcome to a special holiday edition of the Bay Area Times. Today, we're trying something new, an exclusive interview with one of the world's most influential political journalists, Rachael Bade.

Rachael is one of the authors of POLITICO Playbook, one of the most influential DC newsletters, started by Mike Allen in 2007. She has covered Washington for over a decade at POLITICO and is a regular on the Sunday talk shows.

Highlights

• Biden's visit to Kyiv pushes back against GOP wing that wants to cut back on aid.

• No major differences in economic policy between the parties, mostly social issues.

• Expect no major legislation from this Congress.

• 2024: expect Trump vs Biden, divided GOP field, no Trump criminal charges.

Full interview

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Talking about today's news of Biden going to Ukraine: what do you think it means? Are both parties still very pro-aid to Ukraine?

No, not exactly anymore. And I think that that's why Biden's trip was so important.

For a long time, support for Ukraine was very much seen as bipartisan, and even you could even argue that Republicans were even more bullish about making sure Ukraine had money to stand up to Russia. This goes back years.

But recently, with the populism wave we're seeing in the GOP right now, there is a group of Republicans who don't want to help Ukraine. They say it's a blank check, and they want funding to stop, to be more focused on either getting rid of the debt or here addressing the border issue. And that group of Republicans is very powerful in the House, now that it has been flipped into Republican control.

The expectation here is that Biden will have an issue with trying to continue funding for Ukraine. There's some polling suggesting that support for Ukraine here in the United States, while very broad, has started to fade a little bit.

You have people like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, more defense hawks, agreeing with Biden and with Democrats that we need to stand up to authoritarian regimes and support democracy.

That's a debate that will continue to play out. The longer the war goes, the more that new voice in the Republican Party will gain traction.

That's why Biden went to Kyiv today to try to push back on that and say, "no, we're gonna stand with Ukraine." The question is: is he going to be able to give that support given that Republicans are starting to appeal?

From the point of view of many market participants, both parties seem to agree regarding economic policy, in terms of no cuts to Social Security, the military budget, aid to Ukraine, etc. Could you talk a bit about what are the differences between the parties?

There has been some analysis lately that the parties, especially with this populist movement here in the United States that has very much changed the Republican Party, and we see some alignment, weirdly, sometimes between populist Republicans and very liberal Democrats.

There's just definitely some odd synchronization, I guess you could say, on some issues, but I do think that there two parties are still very distinct. In that, if you look at things like social issues, LGBTQ rights, transgender issues, things in education, and abortion, the parties are very distinct on that.

Republicans very much have been leaning into culture wars, and Democrats on these issues are pretty much where they have always been, at least in recent years, but Republicans see this as a stick-it-to-the-man kind of thing, and they very much have used those that in recent elections.

When it comes to spending, obviously, traditionally, Republicans are still the party of small government, less spending, less involvement and Uncle Sam in our lives. But, you know, the Trump years really changed that. And so you actually see the party right now, pretty much divided between a more populist sentiment and their traditional conservative roots.

How has Trump changed Congress?

I've been up on the Hill for over 10 years covering Republicans and Democrats, lawmakers in Congress, and I can remember just a few years ago when Republicans talked a lot about tackling Social Security and Medicare, and wanting to overhaul mandatory spending, which is a majority of our government spending. If you want to talk about getting spending under control, you can't have a serious conversation without talking about those things.

Donald Trump was one of the first Republicans that came in and said we're not going to touch those things. I remember reporting, when Republicans held the House, the Senate, and the White House under Trump, Mitch McConnell very much wanted to have a conversation about entitlements, and they were on a policy retreat, and Donald Trump said, I don't want to go there. I want to spend money. I want to spend money on infrastructure.

It's just very clear that the Republican Party is having an identity crisis.

How was the previous Congress compared to this one?

I would say that in the past couple of years, with Democrats controlling everything, Biden has obviously had a very successful run here in Washington when it comes to legislation, probably one of the most productive administrations I have covered in a while.

He had first the Democratic bill basically approving a bunch of spending for tackling the pandemic and helping people who are struggling during the pandemic. They ended up doing what they called the Inflation Reduction Act, which had a lot of money toward climate change. And that was all passed because Democrats controlled everything.

But they also passed a lot of bipartisan bills: bipartisan infrastructure investments, even a gun safety provision, which kind of shocked me -- I was on maternity leave when that happened.

And then this CHIPS bill. It has to do with manufacturing here in the United States and trying to bolster that, make more products here, and make us more competitive with the rest of the world. That also passed with 10 Senate Republicans. So Biden has had a very successful run both with Democratic bills and also working with Republicans in the Senate.

What we should expect from this Congress?

And I think now that Republicans have flipped the house, you can kiss all that goodbye. I couldn't even think of a single law that they're going to pass that is not what we call must-pass legislation here in Washington. They're just going to have problems doing what they need to do to keep the lights on, funding the government in time, trying to raise the debt ceiling, which will need to be raised as early as June.

We might potentially see a default, which we've never seen before in American history, and that could create some economic calamity; it's going to be really ugly. This Republican House, which is always in chaos, will be a challenge.

So I don't think we should expect any other new big laws to come about in the next two years. It's going to be pretty much a war between the Republicans and the Democrats.

In theory, the Republican Party could hold the debt ceiling hostage until the Democrats budged, no?

It's really hard. I feel like, usually, I can predict how political things are gonna go, because I've been up here for a while. I know a lot of these folks really well. I've covered Kevin McCarthy for years. I've covered Hakeem Jeffries. I've covered Biden. But there's so much uncertainty around the debt ceiling right now.

I don't know who's going to blink first, and I'll just be the first one to say it.

Republicans privately are telling "we're not going to allow a default." And hopefully get some spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling. They want some concession, but Biden is still saying that he's not going to negotiate. And frankly, I don't think that position is tenable because Democrats have negotiated with Republicans on debt ceilings in the past. And for them to say they're not going to do it now, even though it's a divided government -- voters gave the House of Representatives to Republicans, elections have consequences.

So I do think there's going to be a negotiation.

There's going to be an attempt at an agreement. The question is: can they do all this before Congress defaults? I think is going to be a major challenge. And we can go more into this if you want. But basically, McCarthy has to try to get his party to work with the Democrats. He's a very weak speaker. And it could mean the end of his speakership, too, if he strikes a deal.

What does the GOP want? Let's say Biden accepted everything they wanted -- what exactly is that?

So, right now, they say they want to decrease non-defense discretionary spending.

So what is that exactly? You have things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, these are things that must be spent every year, and that's the majority of the budget, but Republicans have said they're not going to touch Medicare and Social Security, so that only means they can touch discretionary spending.

And if you look at that area, a majority of it is actually the Defense Department, the money we spend on the military, but Republicans are divided about even that. And so if they take Social Security off the table, Medicare off the table, defense spending off the table, they really don't have a lot of areas to cut, and they made this promise to themselves that they were going to balance the budget in 10 years. You can't actually do that by only looking at this small portion of spending.

Regardless, right now, I think that they are just trying to get some commitment from Biden to decrease that kind of spending. I think they're gonna go after food stamps. Try to issue some work requirement on food stamps. They'll try to maybe scale back some of the agencies that they don't like, like the IRS.

But non-defense discretionary is only around 4% of GDP. So, to balance the good, they would have to cut almost everything.

And that's those are services that a lot of Americans rely on, right? So it's going to be very unpopular for them, but it'll be interesting to see if there's like a backlash for them next year politically.

The CBO recently put out a projection saying that in 30 years, debt-to-GDP would go to 195%. It seems that every Congress and every administration just hopes nothing bad happens, and they just kick the can down the road.

People have talked about it for years. What was the life expectancy age when Social Security was created? 60-something right? It was much lower than today.

So I think lawmakers privately will tell you they're concerned about this, but everybody's worried about political blowback. And this has been the tale as old as time here in Washington: lawmakers looking at their own re-elections and not wanting to alienate constituencies that vote, which often are older Americans who are expecting their Social Security, they're expecting their Medicare, etc. And nobody wants to look like they're pushing granny off a hill. That was the attack on Paul Ryan, and that was pretty effective against him at the time.

Talking about today's news of Biden going to Ukraine: what do you think it means? Are both parties still very pro-aid to Ukraine?

No, not exactly anymore. And I think that that's why Biden's trip was so important.

For a long time, support for Ukraine was very much seen as bipartisan, and even you could even argue that Republicans were even more bullish about making sure Ukraine had money to stand up to Russia. This goes back years.

But recently, with the populism wave we're seeing in the GOP right now, there is a group of Republicans who don't want to help Ukraine. They say it's a blank check, and they want funding to stop, to be more focused on either getting rid of the debt or here addressing the border issue. And that group of Republicans is very powerful in the House, now that it has been flipped into Republican control.

You have people like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, more defense hawks, agreeing with Biden and with Democrats that we need to stand up to authoritarian regimes and support democracy.

I think that that that's a debate that we're going to continue to play out. The longer the war goes, the more that new voice in the Republican Party will gain traction.

There's some polling suggesting that support for Ukraine here in the United States, while very broad, has started to fade a little bit. The expectation here is that Biden is going to have an issue with trying to continue funding for Ukraine.

That's why Biden went to Kyiv today to try to push back on that and say, "no, we're gonna stand with Ukraine." The question is: is he going to be able to give that support given that Republicans are starting to appeal?

How do you think the 2024 elections will play out, starting with the GOP field?

I think it's more of a repeat of 2016. There were so many Republicans who ran that Donald Trump, who appealed to a very small percentage of the Republican base at the time, was able to just lock down that support. The rest of the field was divided between the 17-18 candidates. And that is what people are worried about here.

So far, it's only one person who is running against Donald Trump, Nikki Haley. However, there's a whole list of people who are making bids right now, planning to jump into the race: Mike Pence, a number of governors, Chris Sununu, Asa Hutchinson, Kristi Noem,DeSantis, etc.

The fear amongst Republicans -- not a lot of them will say this on the record -- but pretty much all of them are telling me this. Nobody, none of them wants Trump to be the nominee.

But they're very worried that too many people are going to jump in and that he's going to maintain his core group of 30% support. So if that happens, you'd have to convince a lot of these members who are going to run that, you know, now's not your time.

Politicians have egos. Like, they don't want to hear that. So will they listen when people start to tell them that? I don't know. If somebody's going to defeat Donald Trump right now, it looks like it would be Ron DeSantis.

What about in the Democratic field?

They're very much united behind Biden.

I think a lot of them see that the idea of Biden stepping down and there being this total free-for-all of power in the Democratic Party would hurt and undercut them if Trump was the nominee. At least, it's how Biden feels. And so that's why Biden who was initially considering himself to be a one-term president is now going to run again. To try to make sure Trump does not win.

The betting markets were, six months ago, saying that DeSantis was the favorite for the GOP nominee, but now it's back to Trump.

Yeah, definitely. The election is really far off. DeSantis isn't even in yet. But a lot of people really do like him. It's just a question of: Trump is already attacking him on a very personal level. He pretty much accused him of having inappropriate relationships with underage girls, with no evidence of this.

But these sorts of attacks can have an effect on a candidate, whether or not they're fair, and so we'll have to see if he can withstand Trump coming after him with all his schoolyard bullying.

What about the potential criminal charges against Trump?

I have no inside knowledge of this.

If the past is prologue, I'm skeptical that Trump will be charged. I've been covering investigations of Trump for a really long time, and a lot of them yielded evidence that a lot of lawyers and former prosecutors almost universally said would result in criminal charges against any other American.

And yet Trump never was charged, and part of that was because he was President right. We have this really obscure rule at the Department of Justice, where they will not charge somebody if they are President at the time, and that clearly helped him when it came to obstruction of justice.

In Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference, when he tried to obstruct that investigation that shielded him from prosecution. There was the whole hush payment scheme of him paying women who accused him of having affairs with them during the campaign 2016 campaign.

He paid them off. That was illegal. He was not charged in that even though his lawyer.

Those two scandals that a lot of people would say were impeachable, but Democrats in the House never really nailed him on these things, either. So, there's a reason I think that people joke that Trump is sort of like Teflon. He, he's had a lot of controversies and yet each one of them seems to sort of bounce on bounce off bounce on vibes. And I was sort of skeptical that the whole classified information thing that everybody was talking about last year was gonna go anywhere. And that has sort of proved right now that Biden has his own classified problems. Mike Pence is having his own classified issues right now. So I don't think they can charge him with that because like, they're gonna charge him.

What about the Trump Georgia election fraud about finding votes?

Even in Georgia, my point is, there has been a lot of evidence that people think shows that he committed a crime and every time you know nothing happens.

So we'll have to see if this is different, but if the past is prologue, I wouldn't expect anything.

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