Wednesday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon, and Andrew Walworth break down the Trump budget’s continuing trek through Congress, the political battles over deportation, and a reckoning on how President Biden’s “problems” were covered in the media. After that, RCP White House reporter Phil Wegmann explains the foreign policy vision on display with Trump’s trip to the Middle East. *** In the first segment, Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation package took another step on its journey through the House committee markup process today. Can congressional Republicans get it over the finish line? “It is not a done deal, there are still divisions in the Republican caucus over spending and Medicaid,” Tom Bevan reported. “Memorial Day is probably too ambitious, they’re now talking like this process could be done by the Fourth of July. With margins this thin, every step forward is a win for Speaker Mike Johnson.” “If the Republicans can keep the caucus together, they’ll move it through to the next committee, a third committee on Monday, and then on to the floor,” Andrew Walworth explained. *** After that, at minute 6, charges have been filed against the Wisconsin judge accused of hiding an illegal alien from ICE officials. Is this selective enforcement or behavior unbecoming of a judge? “We said this was a serious charge when we talked about it, and the grand jury felt the same way,” Bevan said. “This is the ‘FO’ portion of the program.” “She’s accused of sending federal agents to another room while they were trying to arrest someone in her courtroom, someone without papers, and then personally escorting that person out the back door. It seems like pretty clear obstruction of justice,” Cannon commented. *** And then, starting at minute 11, more on the media’s attempt to regain credibility after ignoring President Biden’s obvious deterioration for years. They touch on early quotes from the upcoming book Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and a new essay from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger: A Free People Need a Free Press” “It is unseemly for someone like CNN’s Jake Tapper to be part of this conspiracy and this cover-up and then turn around and profit from writing a book about it, suggesting he wasn’t part of the problem and it’s Biden’s staffers’ fault,” Bevan said. “In a piece we ran on RCP today, Sean Fleetwood in the Federalist picks out ‘Nine Instances Where Tapper Participated in the ‘Cover-Up’ of Biden’s Decline’.” “The legacy press should do a mea culpa about this, some self-examination, and explain to itself and its readers how and why it went wrong,” Carl Cannon agreed. “It is going to have to be some of the people like this, who were dismissive of this criticism of the previous president, who have to stand up and say what they did wrong.” *** In the next segment, starting at minute 23, the political battle over mass deportation is heating up as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem continues to suggest that three Democratic representatives committed felonies during a visit to an ICE detention facility in Newark last week. “The footage of it wasn’t a good look,” Carl Cannon said. “Some sort of sumo wrestler move, screaming and shouting. But it’s a form of civil disobedience, stripping them of committee assignments or charging them with crimes escalates it. And Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. AOC issued these veiled threats, ‘Ohh, they’d better not cross this line or we’re gonna do something.’ But they didn’t say what, I imagine they’ll figure out another way to escalate it. You’d like members of Congress to act like adults.” “It was very insurrection-y, but do you need to turn them into martyrs?” Tom Bevan added. “Which is what they want, by the way. They want to escalate this and cast the administration’s entire deportation strategy in a bad light.” Plus, Major League Baseball has decided Pete Rose and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson are eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, considering that gambling is now legal across most of the country. Carl Cannon has a lot to say about it. *** Finally, at minute 32, RCP White House reporter Phil Wegmann and Tom Bevan review the geopolitical, economic, and philosophical consequences of President Trump’s big Middle East trip. “Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia was remarkable,” Tom Bevan said. “He talked about did it their way, they created this miracle based on Arab values. This trip is not just about business, it is about reorienting the Middle East to be much more pro-American, and for us to take a completely different approach.” “The line that stuck out the most for me was about the gleaming skyscrapers of Doha and Riyadh, contrasted with the attempts to ‘bring democracy’ to Baghdad. The entire speech was a repudiation of neo-conservatism and attempts to nation-build,” Phil Wegmann said. “And the message going to the new Syrian regime is that Trump is a good friend in times of peace, and also a formidable enemy.” *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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