Hello and welcome to the Punch Bull News Readback podcast.

I'm your host, Max Cohen, and today I'm joined by congressional reporter Mika Solner

to talk about her reporting on the Republican Main Street Caucus and its relationship with

President-elect Donald Trump. Mika, how are you?

Good. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, it's always great to have you on the pod.

And this article, I think, is fascinating.

It takes us behind the scenes of a key relationship and one that I don't think is entirely

obvious.

The Main Street Caucus, you can tell us more about it soon, but this is not the Freedom Caucus.

This is not even the RSC. This is, they don't like to be called moderates, but the closest thing

to a pragmatic, moderate, adjacent caucus that Republicans have, they like to get things done,

and they're telling Donald Trump,

we want to work with you. Tell us more about that dynamic.

Yeah, so the Main Street Caucus is a group made up of about 80 House Republicans.

They're viewed as a serious governing wing of the conference, so they're often the ones that help with dealmaking,

negotiating, and try and get over these hills when it comes to these legislative fights. They

actually helped with negotiations with the Freedom Caucus before, but they've been really trying

to improve and, I guess, grow their relationship with Trump and his allies and Trump world in general.

So it's been really interesting to see them, you know, kind of embrace MAGA if you want to.

And I got to be honest, I'm skeptical of this.

And I want to hear your response because I know the HFC, we talk about this a lot.

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