Charlie Kirk Reactions, Trump and Crime, Government Funding

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

Politics, News

4.4 • 783 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike is joined by a new host, political scientist Michael Levy. They open with the political and constitutional fallout from Charlie Kirk’s murder, focusing on government crackdowns on speech. Michael stresses the deeper problem of weaponizing government against dissent, while Mike argues this shows the split between Trump loyalists and constitutional conservatives like Ted Cruz. Next, they turn to Trump’s deployment of National Guard units to cities like Memphis and proposals for tougher sentencing in D.C. Michael emphasizes that these measures are often more about optics than addressing root causes of crime, while Mike worries about performative politics without clear objectives and the loss of bipartisan reform momentum. After that, the discussion moves to the looming government shutdown. Michael predicts a shutdown is likely, given the lack of cross-party negotiations and high stakes over ACA subsidies, while Mike highlights that majority parties almost never win shutdown battles and sees Democrats trying to leverage their strongest policy terrain—healthcare. The guys close with reflections on polarization and leadership. Michael doubts Schumer has leverage to force concessions, while Mike stresses that Democrats cannot afford to fold on ACA subsidies despite the risks of shutdown politics. Listen to Mike’s appearance on the What Do We Do Next? Podcast The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Check out the excellent Sustainable Planet podcast. Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:10.0	Substitution, courtesy of Paddy Power, embarrassing Eddie, makes way for sensible Samuel.
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0:19.0	because with Paddy's super sub, your bet rolls over to the player coming on. Paddy Power. Valid on selected leagues and markets only. Pre-match and in-play bets on qualifying player outcome selections only. T's and Clusions apply. 18 plus, scummelaware. Dot-or. Hi, this is Ava from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly, and earning customer trust has never mattered more.
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1:11.8	Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on American politics and policy.
1:19.4	I'm Northern Kentucky University political scientist Michael Baranowski.
1:23.3	I'm joined today, but well, I was going to be joined today by my conservative counterpart, Sam Dewey, but Sam is apparently MIA.
1:32.0	Sam, if you're there, I hope you're not trapped under anything heavy or anything like that.
1:36.3	And so we're going to have to sort of add lib a little bit here.
1:39.4	Sam was going to do some of the story intros, but I'm not on my own.
1:43.1	God, you would not want that. I'm actually here
1:45.8	with a new voice on the show, political scientist Michael Levy, who Michael and I have known each other
1:52.3	since we were in grad school together a million years ago. So Michael, I'm really glad to have you
1:57.7	on the show. Yeah, great to be with you, Mike, though.
2:19.2	I should say you made an error in that introduction. It's not my first time my voice is on the show because, as you'll know, for many years, I did the intro. That's right. That's right. Back in the early days of the show, we had this contest, and I had, well, sort of a contest. I asked a bunch of my friends, I said, can you do an intro for this show?
2:37.1	And a bunch of people submitted things. And Michael's was by far the best. And we actually used that for a while. That's right. Very cool. So, so if Michael's voice sounds a little familiar, that's why you have really good voice memory, I suppose. Well, that was more my radio voice. This is my actual voice.
	...

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