Summary
This week on Politix, Matt and Brian discuss:
* The biggest political takeaways from Joe Biden’s State of the Union address;
* Whether the press corps will do any soul searching after getting bamboozled by Republican special counsel Robert Hur;
* Can Politix convince Merrick Garland to resign?
Then, paid subscribers get a deep analysis of Trump’s apparent (and abrupt) decision to place Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, after years of insisting he’d never cut them. What precipitated the reversal? Does it have anything to do with his simultaneous reversals on the right-wing Bud Light boycott and the fate of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social-media company? Did he sell his position on entitlements to right-wing billionaires because he’s desperate for campaign and legal-expense money? And what can Democrats do to drive. If you’re interested in the answers to these questions, upgrade to paid, and enjoy the whole episode!
Further reading:
* Brian on how Trump’s Social Security/Medicare flip flop brings the nexus between his policy agenda and personal corruption into focus.
* Matt on how Trump’s position on TikTok was correct, until he abandoned it corruptly.
* What does Project 2025 have to say about Medicare?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something useful that Merrick Garland could do for the future of American democracy and the stability of the constitutional order is resigned. |
| 0:07.5 | God, I love this takes so much. You know, because that would generally... I've never been so attracted to you Matt. |
| 0:13.0 | Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the politics podcast. |
| 0:21.0 | In this episode we're going to reflect briefly on last week's State of the politics podcast. In this episode we're going to reflect briefly on |
| 0:24.0 | last week's State of the Union address, but we really wanted to use the speech as a |
| 0:28.6 | segue into discussing Donald Trump's subsequent and pretty abrupt 180 on its longstanding promise not to cut Medicare or Social Security. |
| 0:38.0 | So what precipitated that and what can Democrats do about it other than use it in campaign ads. |
| 0:44.2 | So we hope you enjoy the conversation and if you like what you're hearing |
| 0:47.7 | and want to listen to the whole episode, |
| 0:49.5 | you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics. |
| 0:52.9 | fm. |
| 0:54.0 | Hey everyone, welcome to the politics podcast. I'm Brian Boiler. |
| 1:02.4 | I'm Matthew Iglesias. So this |
| 1:04.3 | week we'll do a quick drive-by of President Biden's State of the Union address, but we |
| 1:08.8 | really want to talk about what happened since. Biden once again used the State of the Union to browbeat Republicans |
| 1:16.0 | for planning to cut Social Security and Medicare and Republicans in the past had kind of feigned |
| 1:20.8 | outrage as if this was not actually part of their plans. of |
| 1:23.4 | fained outrage as if this was not actually part of their plans. But this time, |
| 1:25.8 | Donald Trump just kind of came out and said, |
| 1:28.6 | yeah, we'll cut Social Security and Medicare maybe. So that's going to be the crux of it, but we did want to acknowledge |
| 1:36.4 | that there was a big political event at the State of the Union address and sort of put it into the political context of the moment. |
| 1:45.0 | Yeah, I mean, you know, Joe Biden went to Congress. |
... |
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