I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast, and congratulations on making it

to the long weekend. After what we've just gone through, probably, and I don't know about the

word probably, the most blatant, brazen act of political corruption in the most corrupt administration

in history. I'm referring to, of course, the Goon Squad Slush Fund and Donald Trump essentially granting himself forever immunity from any IRS audit.

This would be Donald Trump, members of his family and his company can do anything.

And the IRS promises never to look at their books.

Again, meanwhile, Trump's revenge campaign rolls on in the last week. He ended the

political careers of Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and Thomas Massey in Kentucky.

But, but wait, wait, wait, as I wrote to my newsletter yesterday, the narrative seems to have

kind of flipped over the last few days as people realize this revenge

tour may actually be backfiring as more and more Republican senators are bucking the president.

I mean, they are pissed about his endorsement of Ken Paxton.

They are livid about this.

They've killed the billion dollar ballroom deal.

They are not firing the Senate parliamentarian or getting

rid of the filibuster. And this is kind of shocking. More Republicans in the House of Representatives

are reacting to Trump's attempt to bully them by saying, hell no. I mean, now this may be a fall

spring. Okay. I concede that we've been through this before.

But it's also an indication that there are limits to bullying.

And right now you have, I'm looking at the list here, you have a critical mass of Republican senators and members of the House who are, you know, ready to maybe say we don't need to do everything that Donald Trump says that we have to do,

you know, particularly after, you know, he's thrown John Cornyn under the bus.

I mean, imagine you're a Republican senator in the next seven months, you're there,

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