- Good evening and welcome to the "Washington Week Extra." I'm Yamiche Alcindor. We're continuing our conversation on President Biden's agenda and the challenges ahead. Tonight, joining me to discuss all of this is Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, and Seung Min Kim, White House reporter for the Washington Post. Thank you so much both of you for being here. Seung Min, I wanna start with you. My head's still turning a bit, if I could be honest, from Vice President Mike Pence breaking with the President.
- Right.
- Saying that Donald Trump is wrong. I wonder what you just sort of think about this when you think about just sort of the plan ahead, the midterms, sort of what could happen, how ugly this could get.
- Well, it is head spinning, but also he said what is frankly the truth, that he did not have the power to overturn an election. And it's a lie that has become so ingrained as a part of our discussion of our politics, precisely because the former president continues to bang that drum. He says it at rallies, and his power and his influence over the Republican party means that there are Republicans all up and down the ballot who are repeating that lie. So we'll definitely see. We'll definitely be watching and looking to see what kind of an impact that has in the midterms, particularly in the Republican primaries. I'm looking at a lot of various states, particularly in Senate races that are in play, talking about Ohio, Pennsylvania, even Missouri, where there are many Republican candidates who are all kind of scrambling towards the altar of Trump and most of them are really vying to be that pro-Trump Trumpious candidate. But does that work in a general election? You know, Mitch McConnell, who is very close to winning back the majority of the Senate, his motto, basically, this year is no more witches, basically, no more unelectable candidates in these general election races. So how much does that Trump pull in the primary races makes candidates unelectable in general election races that will determine control of the Senate. That impact, that push and pull will be something that we're gonna be watching very closely through November.
- And Peter, it is head spinning that the truth is head spinning, right? It's one of those things where it's like clearly the Vice President is admitting the reality, but somehow we're all shocked by it. I also wonder, when you think about sort of your long time, you've covered so many different presidents as our veteran on the panel, what you make about the fact that President Trump is sort of being even more explicit as the days go on? He's talking specifically about overturning the election. Before it was the election was stolen, but now he's like, "Yeah, well we knew what the outcome was but I wanted it to be different."
- Yeah. No, it's remarkable the last 10 days or so he has been willing to say things ever more and more outrageous, almost as if he's trying to, basically, look for attention and he has to say something even more out of the norms in order to get it. You're right. I mean, saying that he was gonna pardon the January 6th attackers of the capital, that would've been unthinkable even just even just months ago to say out loud that the goal was to overturn an election regardless of what the actual outcome was, that again would've been something unthinkable at one point. And so, and by the way, to attack his former vice president, remember Mike Pence said what he said today after the president put out a statement a few days ago saying that maybe the January 6th committee should be investigating Mike Pence for not using his power that he says he had, which he didn't, to overturn the election. So, he seems to be desperate and craving attention by saying more and more outrageous things. But it's a test right now of where he stands in the Republican party. There are some glimmers, and not to take it too far, but some glimmers that perhaps his hold over the party is slipping at least a little bit. Some of these polls show that the number of Republicans who identify themselves as first Republicans party people as opposed to Trump people has changed dramatically in the last few months. And it maybe that's the kind of thing that Mike Pence is looking at saying he needs to be able to craft an identity that's somewhat different than the president. Having said that, of course, we saw what the Republican National Committee did today. They obviously took the Trumpian line, not only censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for daring to be on the January 6th committee, but also declaring that the January 6th events were legitimate political protests and the people going after them, investigating them, are persecuting them, and that's a very Trumpian kind of line. So everybody's trying to figure out where is the party coming out at this point? How much influence and sway does Trump still have? How much will he have in the weeks to come, as Seung Min pointed out, in these primaries that we're gonna see very soon.
- Yeah, I mean, that all is interesting when you think about the primaries that we're gonna see. I wanna also turn now to sort of some breaking news tonight. I'm reading from the New York Times, so I'm gonna ask this question to Peter since, obviously, you're with the New York times. A North Carolina court says the GOP political maps are unconstitutional. There's essentially a judge saying that the 14 house districts and state legislative districts violated guarantees of free election, speech, and assembly. Now, with that, I know maybe you aren't reporting on this specifically, but I mean, here we have another judge in the South saying that this is problematic. We've seen that before with North Carolina saying at one point that black voters were targeted with surgical precision by the GOP. What do you make of this? Will it change anything?
- Well, look, this is a huge moment in politics that people don't at home pay as much attention to but maybe should, which is to say that once every 10 years that each state redraws its lines. And this is when power, in effect, is redistributed among districts in a state. And each state is going through this right now. You saw, as you rightly point out, the conflict in North Carolina where the judge slapped them down. We don't know whether that will hold up on appeal obviously. We've seen other instances like that in other states. We've seen New York. I think my colleagues just calculated today that the shift in lines could mean an additional three democratic seats. So each party is trying to play it out as much to their advantage as they can. Some states are trying to get away from partisan gerrymandering by turning it over to independent or autonomous commissions of some sort, some sort of body that isn't so directly partisan, but those haven't really taken hold in a lot of states. And so, while a lot of this seems very technical, I think, to a lot of people, really a lot is at stake because it could determine the outcome of this fall's elections. The margin in the house is so close. The Democratic majority is so thin that even just a handful of seats switching because of these lines being redrawn in places like North Carolina could make all the difference in the world.
- Yeah, yeah. And I wanna switch also now, again, to the Supreme Court, because, Seung Min, your reporting was so great this week. There was some reporting on Jim Clyburn's pick. This is, of course, Judge Michelle Childs. There are some labor groups pushing back on her. Lindsay Graham, though, is backing her, so there's some bipartisan support for her. Talk a little bit about why this is happening, what it might mean for the arguments that the union leaders are making but also for the arguments that these lawmakers from South Carolina are making in her favor.
- Right, it's a fascinating dynamic that's unfolding with one of the top candidates for President Biden's Supreme Court nominee. We talked to a lot of people in the labor movement this week, talked to union officials and union leaders on the record about their concerns about Judge Michelle Childs, who is, right now, a South Carolina Federal District Court Judge, has a lengthy history in the South Carolina legal community. But these labor group are pointing to for example, her background at a corporate law firm representing employers against, for example, unionization issues at businesses. And they say this is the moment for President Biden, who has said he would be the most pro-labor, pro-union president in history to make good on that promise by not nominating her. But she does have such a powerful patron in Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat who almost single-handedly revived President Biden's, or then Vice President Biden's, presidential campaign back in early 2020, with that endorsement in the South Carolina primaries. Part of getting that endorsement, we later found out, is for President Biden to make his pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. And Jim Clyburn is making it very clear that this is his favored choice, that he thinks she is the best nominee for the Supreme Court. And Lindsay Graham, a Republican Senator who has had a history of voting for both Democratic and Republican Supreme Court picks from both Democratic and Republican presidential picks. He's all but out there endorsing Michelle Childs as a Democratic nominee that he would support. So how much all that calculation plays into President Biden and the White House right now will be really interesting because they control the Senate and they could go for the most progressive pick that gets the Democratic base excited. But we'll see what ultimate calculations win out at the end of the day, at the end of this month, actually, when President Biden unveils his pick.
- Yeah, and it's gonna be a big moment when he unveils his pick, no matter who he chooses. Peter, you told our producers that it's really sort of a fake debate when you think there's GOP lawmakers who are saying that they're offended at President Biden's pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the bench. You've told our producers, 'cause, of course, you have great contacts here for us all the time, Reagan said he would put the first woman on the Supreme Court. George H.W. Bush wanted to replace Thurgood Marshall with a Black person. Take us through the history here.
- Yeah. No, that's exactly right. To hear Republicans complain about Biden's pledge is to sort of ignore the history of this. Remember, of course, Ronald Reagan ran in 1980. He did pledge to put the first woman on the Supreme Court. We had never had one through the entire history of the country. He fulfilled that pledge by putting on Sandra Day O'Connor, of course, who became a trailblazer in American history as a result. George H.W. Bush didn't openly say he was going to replace Thurgood Marshall with another African-American justice, but that was basically what he was looking to do. And that's one of the reasons why he picked Clarence Thomas. George W. Bush wanted to pick a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor when she retired. He, in fact, nominated Harriet Miers for that purpose. She ended up not getting the nomination, had to drop out, but that was his intent at the time. And of course, remember one other president I can think of would be Donald Trump, who said last year that when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not last year but in the end of 2020, that when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, he would pick a woman to replace her, which of course he did with Amy Coney Barrett. So the idea of selecting Supreme Court justices based on gender or race or other categories like that is hardly new with President Biden. And so I think that what you're seeing, of course, is, on the part of some Republicans, a desire to stoke up some of these culture war battles that we've seen, white resentment, and so forth, when in fact there's a long history of this.
- Well, fascinating history and thanks so much for taking us through it. Well, I'll have to leave it there tonight. Thank you so much to Peter, to Seung Min, for sharing your reporting, and make sure, all of you who are watching at home, to sign up for the Washington Week newsletter on our website. We'll give you a look at all things Washington. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Yamiche Alcindor, goodnight from Washington.