Weekly Wrap | Trump’s Daily Snooze, MAGA’s War on Justice, & Some Republicans Join the Resistance

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Weekly Wrap, where we catch you up on any discussions, interviews, or live shows you might have missed on Lincoln Square throughout the week.

Trump’s Texas-Sized Pardon Fail | The Weekly Assignment with Susan Demas, Sam Osterhout, & Brian Daitzman

Trump has pardoned everyone from loyalists to drug traffickers. These free passes from the president expose a governing style of pure transactional instincts. The American people now see the cost of having a government that uses spectacle as a mask for strength. Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas discusses that and more with Sam Osterhout & Brian Daitzman of The Intellectualist on The Weekly Assignment.

Brian Daitzman: You hit the nail on the head. The president really thought there was a deal here. And it appears that he’s very upset that a deal’s not going to happen as he would like. I think that speaks to a number of things: one is, if you recall many moons ago there was a president by the name of Bill Clinton, and he got in a lot of trouble because he pardoned a man named Mark Rich at the end of his presidency. And republicans at the time, remember this was after Bush v. Gore and President George W. Bush and the White House said this is a president that has no respect for the rule of law, no respect for the Constitution, no respect for decency.

There was some shadiness there. Mr. Rich fled, he went to Switzerland, he didn’t answer to American justice. Now, let’s go to 2025. How many pardons has Donald Trump done since the start of his second term and how many of those are controversial? Let’s just say they’re all hypothetically legal and above board. All the people, I want to say, that he’s gotten attention for pardoning have been terrible people.

Susan Demas: Right. Billionaires who have been convicted of corruption, all of the January 6ers …

Sam Osterhout: Found guilty! Right? All. Found. Guilty.

Brian Daitzman: Exactly, found guilty. And when someone gets found guilty of seditious conspiracy, you conspired against the United States and the Constitution, and you get a pardon – what does that say about the United States when someone can just be pardoned because the president likes them? They’re not repentant, they’re not contrite. I don’t remember many of these January 6ers going to the Capitol and saying, you know, “I’m sorry.” I don’t recall, you know, seven people did die, and 145 police officers, right? The president loves to talk about how he’s pro-police and pro-cop, yet how does someone be pro-police and pro-cop and start an insurrection?

See more of the discussion here.

Trump’s Fog of Snore: MAGAworld is Breaking Apart While the King Sleeps | The Strategy Session

Grandpa is falling asleep at the wheel more and more frequently, and Republicans are panicking about his decline. Brazen lawlessness through boat strikes and economic pain for the American people – Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens discussed this and more on this week’s edition of The Strategy Session.

Stuart Stevens: I tell you, man – you and I did a lot of stuff for the Republican Party, but we never woke up in the morning working on the same side as the fucking Russians.

Rick Wilson: Yeah, I never had that problem. I mean, I think the only one of us who ever did was Paul Manafort, and he was not really one of us, you know. That idea is just nuts.

Stuart Stevens: You know, what’s sort of fascinating is that it runs counter to public opinion.

Rick Wilson: Deeply. You know, when you’ve got 80 percent of Americans who say we should be on the side of Ukraine and 80 percent of Americans who say Putin is to blame for this war. And you’ve got Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, the bag man and Steve Witkoff all doing these deals, sitting with Putin – if Obama was doing the same thing, Republicans would be calling for Witkoff to be arrested when he stepped of the plane and sent to prison for espionage.

Witkoff’s in these meetings, and we now have the transcripts, and not just the transcripts – we have the tapes, European intelligence services where Witkoff says, “let me tell you how to keep Trump on your side. Let me help you keep Trump anti-Ukraine. Let me show you what to say to him to manipulate Trump.”

If someone working for Barack Obama said that or somebody working for Hillary Clinton said that or somebody working for any Democratic president in the history of, ever, they would burn the city of D.C. to the ground.

Stuart Stevens: Yeah, I don’t understand why, if you were prosecuting Witkoff for espionage, why wouldn’t that be your first thing in front of the jury? “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, not only does he favor them, he is actively trying to coach them in how to work against the American interest.”

See more of the discussion here.

Trump’s Economy Isn’t Working & the Weight of War | Anchor Watch with Bobby Jones and Missouri Congressional Candidate Fred Wellman

Bobby Jones and Missouri Congressional candidate Fred Wellman both served our country in uniform. They know the price of sending our service members into harm’s way. They both took this episode of Anchor Watch to discuss that and the problems facing younger Americans.

Bobby Jones: What are people saying that’s bothering them the most right now?

Fred Wellman: What’s fascinating to me is just the frustration of not being represented. One of the biggest things, I really get to the point where I get to talk about policies because people are like, “How are you going to win?”

And the common theme I hear is, even from Republicans – because the nice thing about being a veteran is, we get to go into spaces that may not be welcome to your Average Democrat, let’s be honest. Veterans barbecues aren’t the most liberal places – but I go to all those places and I have the opportunity to talk to fellow veterans, and we may not agree politically, but we talk because we come from a common place, and consistently I hear them say, “Yeah, she’s (Ann Wagner, R-Mo.) worthless. She does nothing for us.” And they don’t bring any money home.

I talked to a local elected official. Here in Missouri, our elected local people are non-partisan, kind of like Georgia. And I said, “what do you need?” And they say, “We don’t get anything Fred, we’ll have meetings and she’ll say ‘oh, well,’ or she wont say and staff will because they don’t need her personally and they’ll say, ‘you know, the representative doesn’t believe in pork belly spending so don’t ask for any projects or money.”

…

There’s five rivers in my district: the Mississippi, Missouri, Merrimack, Gasconade, and one more. Five major rivers. You see what’s happening in the world with flooding. You hear what’s happening in the world with erosion control. Like it or not, things are changing. People here need help with that. That’s federal help for levies, federal help for flood control, damage control. Federal help for flood preparation – millions of dollars.

That’s what FEMA did. FEMA had an entire fund dedicated to flood preparation. All that’s gone. And she hasn’t lifted a finger to bring it back. She hasn’t lifted a finger to help us. And eventually, something bad is going to happen. And they’re going to blame somebody else. They’ll blame Biden. But again, there’s no forethought. There’s no conversations occurring. This is what we need to improve our lives here. Meanwhile, we’ve seen manufacturing disappear. We’ve seen jobs leave the district. We’ve seen all this happen. And again, you turn to Washington and get crickets.

See more of the discussion here.

MAGA’s War on Justice – and How We Fight Back | First Draft with Susan J. Demas and Andrew Warren

Former Florida Prosecutor Andrew Warren joined Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas on this week’s episode of First Draft to discuss how the justice system can be bent and broken by those in power. Working at Democracy Defenders, Andrew has seen first hand how a bipartisan group can fight back against these injustices.

Susan Demas: We’ve focused a lot on Donald Trump’s illegal and extralegal actions in this last year, during his first term. But your firing actually took place years before his reelection. And I’m wondering if you feel that the actions that Ron DeSantis has taken against you and others in Florida, does this demonstrate a wider problem within the Republican Party that won’t necessarily disappear with Trump?

Andrew Warren: I think it does, unfortunately. My suspension, which as you said in the intro, a court later found was unconstitutional. It was politically motivated. They lied about the reasons. They lied in court. I mean, a judge found that it was violating my First Amendment rights, and that was upheld by an appellate court.

This was sort of the canary in the coal mine for these attacks on normalcy, attacks on the rule of law – basically bending and breaking the rules for political reasons. And we saw other suspensions in the state of Florida by the governor. We saw copycat politicians calling out to do the same thing. Ron DeSantis, during his ill-fated presidential campaign, was bragging about how other people talk about going after prosecutors. “I actually removed the prosecutors,” it became a talking point for him. And it became a talking point in the context of the war on women’s rights too.

The main reason for which I was suspended was because I had spoken out against these draconian laws that restrict abortion, one of them being in Florida with a six-week abortion ban. But I was talking about laws all across the country. So they were using these issues as the political litmus test, as the lightning rod to take a very controversial issue on which there is strong support, passionate support on both sides, to use that as an excuse to break these political norms. To remove people from office. To chill free speech. Basically to upend democracy. And we’ve seen President Trump now take that playbook that Ron DeSantis started and put it on steroids by attacking the rule of law literally every day that he is in office.

Susan Demas: Right, and we saw with Ron DeSantis that he did not stop with you. He also fired state attorney Monique Worrell of the 9th Judicial Circuit Court in Orlando. I believe she was just about to prosecute a group of police deputies for an alleged cover-up with false documents… I’m wondering, do you expat that, especially now with the actions that are coming out of the White House, that this will become the norm for how Republican governors run things?

Andrew Warren: I certainly hope not. I hope that the people stand up to this. And in many ways they have. The outpouring of support for my case – from Republicans, people that came up to me and said they didn’t vote for me but what was happening was wrong. That’s not what our democracy is about. This is an attack on our elections. It’s really reassuring.

At the same time, we’ve seen partisanship get worse over the past few years. We’ve seen the demonizing of our political opponents and even the demonizing of supporters of our political opponents get worse.

See more of the discussion here.

A Level of Resistance We Haven’t Seen … Until Now | David Pepper & Lisa Senecal

We have seen political maps growing more controversial and contested by the day with Indiana being the latest attempt at the president’s gerrymandering efforts. Lisa Senecal and David Pepper sit down to discuss these pressure campaigns and more.

Lisa Senecal: We have someone in office right now who believes that they should have, that he should have unlimited power and influence over everything in this country. And the more ways that we can show that we’re pushing back – even if the Supreme Court is willing to accept that in theory – the American people are not going to tolerate that.

And that takes us to Missouri. Can you talk to us about how there’s just incredible work being done by dedicated people in Missouri in particular?

David Pepper: It’s been an awesome story. People forget that Missouri was one of the first states that Trump got to start getting rid of districts. And the Republicans, in places like Indiana, are now trying to say, “well, you all started it.” No. This came from Texas, Ohio. Mike Johnson was interfering in our ballot issue of last year in Ohio that would have stopped gerrymandering.

So the reason other states like California are doing this is to actually respond or sort of rebut and fight fire with fire. Missouri was one of those early states, just like Indianapolis. They split Kansas City three ways to get rid of a longtime majority-minority district and then the citizens started gathering signatures.

Missouri, like Ohio and other states, can repeal laws. Can go to the ballot and in just a few months – despite the Secretary of State and an Attorney General literally doing everything they could through court cases and other decisions to stop them – the citizens of Missouri went and gathered 300,000 signatures. And in theory, we know they’re going to fight this. That leads to a referendum on the map by November of ‘26 and should freeze the map in the meantime.

Now, I think you’re going to see again … you’re going to see arguments. “You don’t get to have a referendum on this, that’s not legitimate.” We’ll see where that goes. My guess is that ends up as a state Supreme Court issue, maybe federal. But overall, 300,000 signatures, that is a ton of work. This was a grassroots effort that they did in only a few months, and they did it with their own elected officials at every step – trying to block them, stop them, and still doing that now.

If Indiana goes the right way and Missouri holds, that’s three seats that they tried to steal that they’re going to fail to steal. I will tell you, it gives me chills when I see this. I mean, we go back over the years and we’re such a legalistic society. We just want the Supreme Court to save us. It’s not saving us. What’s happening right now in these places… And by the way, let’s be clear. Since JD Vance went to Indianapolis to start this process, prosecutors have been at that state house over and over in Indiana. It’s underwater because of that. Same with Missouri. These people went out and got signatures, huge numbers of signatures.

It’s a great reminder of our whole country’s history that, in the end, it’s the people that save the day. It is the people deciding we see something that’s wrong. We care about democracy.

See more of the discussion here.

Sicker, Poorer, & Hopeless: The MAHA Master Plan | Dr. Rob Davidson joins Susan Demas

The American people saw two health care plans fail in the Senate this week and an HHS Secretary in RFK Jr. told us we need to do pull-ups in the airport. Dr. Rob Davidson of Paging America is calling B.S. on the MAHA movement as it seeks to create deadly healthcare cuts that will result in millions paying more. He joined Susan Demas to discuss that and the state of healthcare in America.

Susan Demas: Not too long ago, the Senate voted on two healthcare plans that were up for discussion. One came from Democrats, one from Republicans. Probably not a surprise to too many people who have been watching, both of them have failed.

So now, we are weeks before the new year when healthcare costs are set to skyrocket for so many. Tell us what’s going on and what we can expect.

Dr. Rob Davidson: What’s going on on the ground is you’ve got 22, 20-some-odd million people, who have had enhanced subsidies for their premiums, for their insurance since 2021 – and those are expiring, I think in 20 days. And Republicans have known this, right? They passed their reconciliation bill, this so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Back in the spring they cut Medicaid, but didn’t do anything about this. Haven’t done anything about this.

Now we’re going to see an average of $1,000 increase in premiums. For some people, that’s two, three times their normal premium for insurance. And I think the estimate is about four or five million people are just going to go without because they look at their budget and they say, “I cannot afford that amount of money. I have to pay the rent, pay for food, put gas in my car.”

And we’ll go back to the bad old days pre-ACA, pre-Obamacare for folks who just sit home and suffer and come to the ER and see me at the last possible minute when they can’t sit home and suffer anymore. It’s a pretty sad day.

Susan Demas: What is the average amount that healthcare premiums are expected to increase next year? I mean, I’ve been seeing all sorts of numbers, but basically somewhere around 20%.

Dr. Rob Davidson: Well as a percent of the premiums, the insurance company said it’s something around 20 percent. But now with the subsidies going away for a whole bunch of people, we’re talking 100, 200 percent of what they were paying – that’s what they’re going to be expected to pay because the subsidies, the tax credits that made those premiums go down by a certain amount, people only had to pay a certain percent of their income toward their insurance and now they’re being expected to take on that full boat.

See more of the discussion here.

How Right-Wing Media Keeps Us Outraged | It’s the Democracy, Stupid with Edwin Eisendrath & Juliet Jeske

You may know her as Decoding Fox News on Threads, Instagram, and elsewhere on social media – Juliet Jeske is a master at getting to the heart of disinformation and outrage. She joined Edwin Eisendrath on It’s the Democracy, Stupid to discuss the current media landscape where viewers have been coached to lock in on a closed emotional loop.

Juliet Jeske: It’s always the same hosts. They [Fox News] shuffle them around from show to show. They use that term, family. Another thing they promote a lot is this return to the “good old days,” of “Oh, remember when you could just …”

I was just talking to my sister about this “War on Christmas” – and this idea of ‘Happy Holidays’ was born out of corporations wanting to sell to everybody, and they’ve turned that into an attack on their faith. And it’s like, “actually … the department store wants everybody to shop there. Not just Christians.”

The War on Christmas gets really comical. Especially in New York, which is an incredibly diverse city with a huge Jewish population and a huge Muslim population – it’s like Christmas exploded in Midtown – and it’s hilarious that people think there’s this war on Christmas.

Edwin Eisendrath: And now there’s others trying to copy this formula. You have Newsmax, maybe NewsNation, maybe now CBS. Are you going to have to add CBS to your work?

Juliet Jeske: [laughs nervously] Not yet. It’s like holding onto the tail of a dragon. It’s so hard to keep up with them. One of the things that’s really challenging about the job – this just came up: There’s a story about a possible war crime and I had to describe it in my newsletter and how Fox was reacting to it. And this is why people and journalists dedicate themselves to a beat, because the terminology of the military is very exact, and you don’t want to screw that up.

What happens to me, is that no matter what they’re talking about, every week I have to tackle a new topic – and there’s times that I do feel in over my head. If I make a mistake, boy, will I hear it.

…

Edwin Eisendrath: The gap between reality and what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger – and it sounds like what you’re trying to tell me is that at Fox they’re trying to keep him tethered to reality and it’s stretching them thin, so they change the subject. I mean the Defense Department and the State Department have had some terrible news lately. We’re moving toward war in Latin America and seized a tanker but they want to talk to us about changing the official font?

Juliet Jeske: I mean, it’s so dumb. There’s so many layers of dumb. This week they started off panicking about the affordability crisis then midweek they pivoted and decided we’re just going to talk about Venezuela and the border. And now they’re recycling stuff about the border to remind their viewers of how great Trump is. They’re trotting out stuff like, “remember how bad the border was? Look how great the border is now.” They’re doing all this border stuff that isn’t relevant and is old. And talking about how ‘he sealed the border instantly!’ and it’s like, “yeah, because he did it illegally.” They just leave that out.

…

So they were talking about that and now they’re talking about Venezuela and I’m sitting there thinking, “I don’t know how many Americans want to send their kid to die in Venezuela,” so I don’t think they’ve sold that very well. They’re very much hyping war in Venezuela. It’s a very strange way they’re handling it because they tried to make it about drugs and now it isn’t about drugs.

…

They act like it’s almost an inevitability.

See more of the discussion here.

Behind the Numbers & Joe & Alex MASHUP | Rick & Andrew Wilson join Joe Trippi & Alex Shashlo LIVE

We had a packed house for Behind the Numbers this week as Rick & Andrew Wilson sat down with Joe Trippi & Alex Shashlo to discuss the erosion of Trump’s approval, how Americans are feeling economic pain and the propaganda Trump is using, and how exposed are down-ballot Republicans for what he’s been doing?

Rick Wilson: I think that’s a real loud alarm bell down ballot because those candidates, those Republican elected officials, they don’t get the same sort of pass that Trump gets from his people. They don’t get the same sort of, ‘oh well, it’s just Trump being Trump.’ They’re like, I’m pissed. Why can’t I afford groceries and rent in your congressional district, Congressman Smith?

It really, I think, the burden he has from this economic screw-up, from the trade war and everything else, the price tag is going to be presented to these down-ballot candidates. So we’ve all talked about this in various conversations, various chats – in a generic year, the map would have between 15 and 20 contested congressional seats. And in a contested and in a generic year, we would probably see one Senate seat in play this year.

We are not seeing that anymore. And I just want to talk with you guys, you know, we were all stunned by the numbers in November, but for all of us, Florida was a real alarm bell this week for the Republicans. A Democrat gets elected mayor of Miami, and you know what? They tried the playbook on her that has worked 100 times in Miami. “She’s a communist. She’s a socialist.” Communist, socialist, communist, socialist. Castro, Castro, Castro. And it didn’t work because she was out there talking about building affordable housing, fixing transportation, fixing education, bringing prices down. Which if you’ve been even vaguely aware of Miami, it is the home of the 1957, 1,100 square foot, 2-1 [two bedroom, one bathroom], $3.5 million teardown. Prices are out of control.

All she talked about was affordability, right? And it blew the doors off. We had a state Senate race where the Republican in a very Republican seat in a +10 Republican seat, was up eight and he won. But it was a seat that Trump won by 40.

We had a state House race where a Democrat overperformed Kamala Harris by 23 [points] in a state House race. The earthquake, as I keep calling it, the meteor is coming – and the dinosaurs are looking up and going, “what is that bright thing in the sky approaching us so very fast?”

Andrew Wilson: And this has sort of become a common thread we’ve seen in elections throughout this whole year is that Republicans try the old culture war playbook. And Democrats are sort of rallying around affordability, and that’s really working for a lot of these candidates. It is really surprising in Florida. But we did see that massive swing in Florida’s first district. That was the biggest swing in a congressional special election this year out of some massive swings to the left. I think there are some bright spots even in the reddest states.

Rick Wilson: And I think a lot of these states, these red states, have taken such a hard economic hit, which leads us to this idea that we’re expanding the map this year. And in this room, the four of us are incredibly excited about one opportunity to expand the map where we think there is potential for an earth-shaking knockout blow – and that is the great state of Alabama and our friend Doug Jones, who is running against Tommy Tuberville for governor.

Tommy Tuberville, just so everyone is aware, does not live in Alabama. He lives in Destin, Florida. I could show you his house. I’ve driven past it on 30A 100 times. He literally does not live in Alabama and is running for governor of the state. Doug Jones is one of the, he almost feels like an Aaron Sorkin character, guys. He’s just a fundamentally good dude. He is right in his heart and right in his brain. And Alabama is not as out of reach as people think.

So, Alex and Joe, tell us more about this race because you guys are going to be very much involved in that, and I think our audience is very interested in seeing how there’s a possible pickup in a governor’s race in a state that, on paper, shouldn’t be in play.

Joe Trippi: I’m down in Birmingham right now. I’ve been down here for a week. Alex and I have been working hard to get this launch, the announcement of the live speech tonight that will be going out. I think Lincoln Square will be carrying it on our Substack.

But look, last night I went to an event. The energy is just off the charts. It feels like those moments right after he announced in 2017, in the state, it exploded. Took a while for everybody else to get it, but it happened. And the energy is just incredible.

See more of the discussion here.

Trump at the Crossroads: Venezuela, Affordability, & Capitalizing on Biden’s Immigration Failures | Two Joes Podcast

The Two Joes, Trippi and Klein, are back this week with a beef – Democrats’ past performance on immigration and race. Joe Trippi is focused on Trump’s affordability issues and alleged war crimes, so they discussed how Dems can capitalize on Trump’s failures and more.

Joe Trippi: Just like the CHIPS Act and some of the things that Biden did, that will take years for people to be benefiting from, years from now, maybe it didn’t change for Biden – it didn’t change the fact that on the ground everybody was paying more for things and didn’t feel the economy was good or that he had done anything about it. Even though we’ll experience those benefits later on.

The same thing here, if he did announce a Marshall Plan, which I agree with you is sorely needed to strengthen the grid to replace something that’s just falling apart essentially, and just not be able to carry the load that it needs to carry – that needs to be done. But the impact of those shovels hitting the ground to do that, would take years to do and the country would benefit from it for sure. But, I don’t think Trump, politically, that rates would be going up. State after state that I’ve been visiting, they’re at the highest levels they’ve ever been, and they continue to increase and there’s all kinds of reasons for that. The state of the grid, the data centers that are being built and the energy they take. I agree with you. He hasn’t done anything, but in the end, I don’t say any way in the next year that those prices are going anywhere but up. And no matter what he does about it – whether he suddenly declares his love of windmills, you won’t be able to build up windmills fast enough.

Joe Klein: Here’s the thing though. You’re absolutely right on all three of those issues. Housing isn’t going to be resolved in the next year either, and the state of our health care system probably isn’t. But there are answers out there for all of them, and Democrats could pounce on them.

The biggest thing that they could do in the area of energy policy and housing is to come out in favor of a sunset bill in the House. You have stacks, mountains, HImalayan-sized mountains of regulations that are just encrusted into the system. Our old friend, Al Frum, who founded the Democratic Leadership Council, back when he was a staffer in the ‘70s, tried to push a sunset bill that would give a shelf life for every regulation of 10 years. And after 10 years, Congress would have to decide whether it wanted to keep that regulation or dispose of it.

I’m sure there are plenty of regulations out there to regulate horses and carriages.

Joe Trippi: I think that’s the same thing. I mean, I understand what you’re saying. Don’t disagree with it. But the fact is, you put a sunset law that says anything on the books now, sunsets in five years. Well, in five years, that’s going to create all different changes, even if you sunset everything in six months. Great, those regulations are gone.

My point is, I think we’re in a moment where people are in so much pain. It’s like you said, the crossroads. We’re at a crossroads where I think a lot of people are in a lot of pain in terms of living paycheck to paycheck. Their energy rates are going up. The one place where the government could have done something… to attack inflation, for instance. Trump did the opposite. The tariffs, whether temporary or transitory, inflation rates have gone up seven-tenths of a percent this year over year.

See more of the discussion here.