•  Republicans clinched a governing trifecta late Wednesday after a handful of congressional race calls cemented the party’s House majority. As for Democrats, officially losing the House means the party will be shut out of power for at least the next two years. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier this week the party will have to figure out how to strategically wield its influence while in the minority, while also figuring out how to gear up for the next election. Brianna Tucker, deputy campaign editor for The Washington Post, stops by the WAD studio to talk about what voters told her on the campaign trail, and how the Post is gearing up for a second Trump administration.
• Also on the show: Trump picks anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, senators voice skepticism about whether Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz can win confirmation to be the next attorney general, and The Onion buys Infowars.
  

• Check out Brianna’s reporting – www.washingtonpost.com/people/brianna-tucker/
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, November 15th and I’m Jane coaston. This is What a Day. The show that stands with representative Lauren Boebert as she asks important questions as part of the House oversight Committee. Like is the Department of Defense combining humans and animals to create hybrids with special capabilities? And are there secret alien civilizations at the bottom of the sea? She truly is doing the work of her constituents, really digging deep into the biggest concerns of the voters. [music break] On today’s show, Florida sues FEMA for allegedly discriminating against Trump supporters after hurricanes. And it happened, Trump picked RFK Jr as his secretary of Health and Human services. Let’s get into it. Republicans clinched a governing trifecta. A handful of congressional race calls cemented the party’s House majority. With control of the Senate and the White House already secured. The GOP is now in a good position to usher in President elect Donald Trump’s agenda to make America great again for Republicans and rich people. A few House races still haven’t been called, but it looks like Republicans will have about a four or five seat majority. At best, the party will improve on its existing tiny House majority by one seat. As for Democrats, officially losing the House means the party is effectively shut out of power for at least the next two years. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier this week the party will have to figure out how to strategically wield it’s influence while in the minority. 

[clip of Hakeem Jeffries] And we’ve got to, as Democrats, work with the incoming administration whenever and wherever possible, and strongly disagree when necessary. And that’s going to be the approach that we take. 

Jane Coaston: At the same time, Democrats will also need to figure out what went wrong this year in an election they absolutely could have won. I wanted to dig into this a little bit, so I spoke with Brianna Tucker. She’s a deputy campaign editor for The Washington Post, and she also covered the 2024 presidential campaign and congressional races. She stopped by the WAD Studio to talk about what she saw on the campaign trail and how her team at The Post is gearing up for a second Trump administration. Brianna Tucker, welcome to What a Day. 

Brianna Tucker: Thank you. It’s good to be here. 

Jane Coaston: So there are a ton of theories, obviously, as to why Trump won and Harris lost. Inflation, cultural issues, a global backlash, a growing class divide. Based on what you saw on the campaign trail. Do you see any evidence that bolsters one theory over the others? 

Brianna Tucker: Yes, but I wouldn’t say that any of that is complete. I think it’s still way too soon. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Brianna Tucker: Um. It’s a lot of narratives are–

Jane Coaston: Oh. 

Brianna Tucker: Emerging out right now. Right? Um. 

Jane Coaston: Narratives I feel like got pre-written like six months ago. 

Brianna Tucker: Like into the stars, into the stars. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Brianna Tucker: Um. And some of those things. We can look at polling. We can look at um. You know, one thing that I think about often is this uh notion, or at least the argument that both campaigns were trying to make about the other party as far as threats to democracy. Right. Um. We even did a poll on, you know, do Americans feel like one particular person is more equipped to handle threats to democracy? And a majority of Americans do think it’s a serious threat, but they didn’t think that Biden was the person to actually handle that. They thought that Trump would be better at that. And so now we’re looking at this election where one party, the Democratic Party, casts its whole argument like centered its argument on this risk. Right. And a large part of the electorate that most of it decided to disregard that like that was not important enough based on other issues that they also laud as important, whether it was the economy, whether it was abortion or immigration. So those are some of the things that were clearly indicators, right? We don’t completely disregard that polling. But even now, it’s it’s too soon to call all these shots and and all the autopsies are still being examined of what happened. 

Jane Coaston: Right. Exactly. Yeah. 

Brianna Tucker: Um. We did see a huge shift of working class voters to Trump. 

Jane Coaston: Did you see that happening on the ground, too? Based on who was attending the candidate’s rallies? 

Brianna Tucker: Oh. Absolutely. Even the first Trump rally that I had been to that was not you know related to the caucuses, primaries, anything at the convention that he was doing. Um. In North Carolina, and I was speaking with a voter who was undecided. This is maybe four days before the election. Um. Again, working class. And he mentioned that he was not necessarily sure about who he would vote for. He had kind of disdain for both political parties. He was a former veteran. Um. He was a younger, under 30 Black male and was at this rally trying to figure out what the messaging was going to be. But a lot of the things that he talked about, he he was clearly aware that, yes, Trump has said these things has said things about me has you know alleged that I should relate to him. But he was also focusing on, as he called himself, socially, you know, liberal, conservative like economically. And that was the things that he was worried about. He’s like, you know, I have to drive an hour to get to work here. It’s one of the only places that pays me a decent wage. Trump, I think, could make my life better here in North Carolina, which is mostly rural. And that that was what his selling point was. It’s like he was very aware of all the other kind of arguments that Democrats had made against Trump. But the economic message that he felt seen by was being delivered from Trump. 

Jane Coaston: What sorts of questions do the election results raise for you? What are the big ideas that you think reporters should start exploring and investigating? 

Brianna Tucker: Oof. So many questions. Um. Does democracy matter? I also think about what our role is, especially as like legacy media, what our role really is here in media, especially in a time where, you know, a president elect is saying that the media is enemy of the people um or, you know, directly criticizing our our reporting, our integrity. Um. I think some of the other questions that we’re asking and thinking about is the voters. Um. People are complex. And I think it’s easy to just kind of lump people into one particular bubble and say, oh like, you know, these people support Trump, and here are the reasons why these people supported Harris, and here are the reasons why. And a lot of people I’ve talked to, um they had notions of why they liked both. And it was only one particular thing that maybe sold them on the candidate. They could make sense of both candidates arguments. Um. 

Jane Coaston: Right. I think that sometimes in our work we wind up flattening people’s politics in a way that is not very helpful. And then every election, we’re super confused by people who voted for raising the minimum wage and for Donald Trump. 

Brianna Tucker: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s not as complex for them, though. And it’s kind of the the bubble I think we’re also in a lot of the media kind of places that we’re in where it’s like the East Coast, West Coast, thinking about some of those in-between places, a lot of rural places, um how our local media is maybe disappearing and what what kind of jobs we have here to also get that information where it is a desert for people who want to know what’s going on and what’s happening. That that impartiality that we need to bring. 

Jane Coaston: I remember 2004 when George W. Bush won reelection and Republicans had control of Congress and there was kind of this idea there’s actually like a John Podhoretz book basically arguing that this is what life is going to be like. Republicans are going to be in charge forever. And then two years later, there was a massive blue wave. Two years after that, Obama was elected. Getting shut out of power can sometimes be good for political parties. So is there any silver lining here for Democrats? 

Brianna Tucker: I think so. I think they have to go back to figuring out what their message is. I think they have to figure out what it was that got them into power in the first place. But I think it can be beneficial, I think, for the party to look inward and really think about, okay, are we the party of working class and what are the messages that we’re actually saying to people? Um. Two thirds of the country does not have a college degree. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Brianna Tucker: And that’s something that I don’t think everyone necessarily thinks about. But when the party is messaging on on, you know, certain types of business tax deductions, um does everybody want to start a business? Is everybody fitting into that pot that you’re trying to cater a message to um how the party really looks at what they’ve been saying, what they’ve been doing? I don’t think it was necessarily, um you know, a message of, oh we focused on abortion too much. But did you also focus on these other issues that people care about and what they want to hear about? So I think that could be an upside, at least for Democrats. But it can definitely be tough, too, um because we’re looking at one party having, again, control of the presidency, the House and the Senate. And that makes you wonder about what the commitment to bipartisanship will look like. 

Jane Coaston: Just from a practical standpoint. How is The Washington Post and your team specifically gearing up to cover another Trump administration and the onslaught of absolutely batshit news it produces. 

Brianna Tucker: Like any other administration, like like any other administration. I feel like, if anything, the team that we have is even more prepared because they’ve already done this once and we have the reporting. But also every indication that this presidential elect is going to have even more acute power this time in the decisions that he’s made. There’s probably an appointment being made right now that I’m not catching because it’s just been flowing all day. But it’s clear, you know, even in the last administration, he had appointed people who were um, you know, some career officials, but were still, at least in his mind, going to be loyal to his cause. And a lot of those people either resigned or stepped down or were fired because of that tension with Trump. And you’re seeing now that he’s appointing people who are um not your establishment type folks, who are definitely more of the conservative kind of lawyers and loyalists who will fall in line with his agenda. And I think we as an organization like obviously I only speak for myself, but I feel like we are prepared to, as any administration, continue to keep asking, okay, what are the consequences here? Who benefits? Who suffers? Continue to hold to account, you know, the rule of law, which is what a lot of people have question of. Can someone do this? What happens next? Um. Being really quick to say, okay, don’t fall for the shiny object this time, like what’s happening over here. Keep your eyes you know on the ball on all the policies because a lot is a lot is happening. 

Jane Coaston: Brianna Tucker, thank you so much for joining me. 

Brianna Tucker: Thanks so much. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Brianna Tucker, deputy campaign editor for The Washington Post. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Dick Durbin] In light of Donald Trump’s selection of former Congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, I’m calling on the House Ethics Committee to preserve and share the report and all relevant documentation on Mr. Gaetz with the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Jane Coaston: That was Democratic Senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, calling for the House to share what is expected to be a bombshell report on former Representative Matt Gaetz before the Senate begins its attorney general confirmation hearings. The House Ethics Committee has been investigating Gaetz after members of Congress said he would show them videos of himself having sex with young women. So, yes, President elect Donald Trump chose someone to serve as attorney general who has been accused of showing his sex tapes to his colleagues and allegedly slept with a 17 year old, which is a crime. Which he also supposedly bragged about to members of Congress. To quote a prominent right leaning commentator referring to Gaetz, [clears throat] there are pools of vomit with more to offer the earth than this STD riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity. Gaetz resigned from his post effective immediately on Thursday morning, and many reports claim he didn’t step down to assume the role of attorney general, but rather to stop the Ethics Committee from releasing the report everyone is now dying to see. House report aside, The Wall Street Journal has one source saying that no votes for Gaetz are over 30. He only needs three Republican no’s to tank his confirmation. Here’s what Republican Senator John Cornyn had to say about the Gates pick. 

[clip of John Cornyn] I think there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee [?]–

[clip of unspecified reporter] So you want to see it? 

[clip of John Cornyn] Absolutely. 

Jane Coaston: If this report doesn’t get formally released, it is definitely getting leaked. The state of Florida sued FEMA on Thursday, accusing the federal agency of discriminating against Trump supporters impacted by Hurricanes Milton and Helene. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a complaint, citing a recent article from the conservative media outlet The Daily Wire. The article includes a screenshot of a message sent by a female supervisor instructing her team to, quote, “avoid homes advertising Trump on surveying the damage left behind by the hurricanes.” Moody claims at least 20 Florida households with Trump signs and flags have been skipped over by FEMA as a result. The supervisor was fired over the weekend in the wake of the report. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said in a statement, quote, “This type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct.” Remember yesterday when we said The Onion was one of the rumored bidders for Alex Jones’s Infowars media empire? Well, they were, and they won. Jones was forced to auction off the company as part of a defamation lawsuit brought by the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims. He called it a hoax, which ended up costing him almost $4.5 billion. Jones took to Twitter in the immediate aftermath of hearing the news about the sale. 

[clip of Alex Jones] So this is all happening right now. That this is the tyranny of the New World Order, desperate to silence the American people. The mandate of Trump against the whole law affair. They don’t care. So the system still thinks it’s in charge. I’m going live right now for what probably will be the last transmission from this building. 

Jane Coaston: The Infowars website was down within hours of the announcement, and the satirical news site plans to relaunch it in January as a parody of itself. They own everything. The sets, the desks, the IP, the social media accounts and trademarks, the video archives. All of it. Congratulations to the families of the Sandy Hook victims. They now get the satisfaction of watching Alex Jones’s life’s work destroyed by people who wrote perhaps the most perfect satire of America’s mass shooting problem to ever exist. No way to prevent this says only nation where this regularly happens. And finally, if you’re interested in helping Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy clean up government waste for free. Get on that Twitter app and send the newly created Department of Government Efficiency a direct message. As a department which isn’t a real department, put it on Twitter, they want quote, super high IQ, small government revolutionaries willing to work 80 plus hours per week on unglamorous cost cutting. As Elon Musk added, quote, “Indeed, this will be tedious work. Make lots of enemies and compensation is zero. What a great deal.” End quote. The world’s richest man asking for volunteers to do something stupid? Sign me up. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. He did it. He actually did it. It’s actually happening. Trump is expected to nominate RFK Jr for secretary of Health and Human Services, despite rumors in recent weeks that the incoming administration was distancing itself from him. Trump had this to say about him at the now infamous Madison Square Garden rally in late October. 

[clip of President elect Donald Trump] Robert F. Kennedy cares more about human beings and health and the environment than anybody, and he’s gonna be absolute, having him is such a great honor. I’ve been friends of his for a long time, and I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines. The only thing I don’t think I’m going to let him even get near is the liquid gold that we have under our feet. 

Jane Coaston: See, it’s funny he says that because back in 2014, you know, the before times, RFK Jr had some very strong words for oil executives. 

[clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] I think they should be in jail. I think they should be enjoying three [?] and a cot at The Hague with all the other war criminals over there. 

Jane Coaston: Huh? See, that’s what gets me about this pick. I know, the fact that RFK Jr is an anti-vaxxer gets top billing as it should, but rarely is there a pick for such a massive job. HHS is a huge part of the federal budget that has completely opposite views to the person who selected him. RFK Jr wants to ban a whole host of food colorings and pesticides. Chemicals Trump’s first administration said were just fine. And yeah, there’s also his anti-vaccine stance and how it’s connected to the deaths of dozens of children in Samoa and the Aids denialism and the brainworm and the dead bear and the whale head. So to try and figure out what this could all mean for us. I called up Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician, epidemiologist and host of the podcast America Dissected. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, welcome to What a Day. 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Thank you so much for having me, Jane. It’s always good to speak with you and I’m sorry to have to speak with you under such challenging circumstances. 

Jane Coaston: Well, let’s get into it. First and foremost, is this actually going to happen? Is RFK Jr, the dead bear guy, the extramarital affairs diary guy, really going to get confirmed to run Health and Human Services? 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Brain worm guy. You forgot about that one. Um. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: So, you know, I’m I’m going on a limb in speculating here. I wonder whether or not this appointment to HHS, considering that he’s probably a bridge too far for a lot of even the Republican senators, I wonder whether or not this is an opportunity for somebody like Trump to give him something without actually giving him something. And, you know, you put him up for HHS secretary and then if he doesn’t get approved by the Senate, then you’ve you’ve fulfilled your part. But then you don’t actually have to deal with him over the long term. That being said, you got to take it seriously. When somebody like RFK Junior, he and his nonprofit responsible for a quarter of the disinformation spread about Covid vaccines in the pandemic, you’ve got to take it seriously when somebody like this is viable for a position as important as HHS secretary. 

Jane Coaston: RFK Jr is a vaccine denier. He is also a person who wants to ban a large number of pesticides and chemicals from food. He once demanded the arrest of big oil executives. He was even briefly floated by as a potential Obama pick to run the EPA back in 2008. There is an inherent tension of nominating this person to work in an administration that wants to deregulate literally everything. What does that even look like? 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: I think we look for ideological coherence. When when you look at the MAGA 2024 coalition, it really is a lot more of the kind of coalition that um that Democrats have tended to build. People with very different positions that all can kind of fit together under one umbrella, even if uncomfortably. I think the thing about RFK in particular, to zoom in on him. RFK says all the wrong things for all the right reasons. Like he wants to make America healthy. I want to make America healthy. In fact, it’s what I’ve done with my entire career. But I don’t think that the problem with pharma is that they manufacture vaccines. I think that the problem with pharma is that they manufacture a whole lot of drugs that too many Americans can’t afford. But when you divorce yourself from science, when it comes to health care decision making, you can come up with a bunch of answers that really aren’t based in reality. And when you do that, a lot of people get hurt. 

Jane Coaston: If he gets confirmed, what does Trump even mean when he says that he’s going to let RFK Jr quote, “go wild”, what kind of power would RFK Jr actually have and how would he actually wield it?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah, there’s a lot that an HHS secretary can do. But the problem is that I worry that an RFK Jr is going to start gutting a lot of what we rely on the CDC to do, whether it’s collecting really high quality data or it’s setting the framework for vaccine recommendations or it’s being able to work with local and state health departments to coordinate responses to situations like the Covid 19 pandemic. And by the way, there was a case of H5n1 avian bird flu in Canada in a kid just this week. And so there’s a lot moving forward that we’re going to need this agency to do. You think about a lot of the way that that the FDA works, which would sit downstream of an HHS secretary. And so you think about all of the ways that he can start to change and tinker with the decision making inside of these agencies. And so I actually worry long term about the implications for the kind of legislation that they might be able to pass out of the Senate and House under that kind of leadership in ways that could fundamentally decimate a lot of what um we take for granted in in life. 

Jane Coaston: You mentioned avian flu a little earlier. Having an Anti-vaxxer Secretary of Health and Human Services with an impending perhaps pandemic seems bad to me. What would having RFK in office mean for the United States should there be another Covid level public health crisis? 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: I mean, we saw what happened the last time Trump was president in–

Right. 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: The midst of a very huge, serious pandemic that ended up taking uh over a million lives. And I just want to be clear about something. I think we bake the pandemic into the cake as if it was always going to be that way. Had we had the same mortality rates as Australia, a society that’s really quite similar to ours, we could have saved nearly 800,000 lives. And that’s what’s at stake. It’s almost impossible to really understand how this could have worked had we had a president who was interested in actually listening to experts. Now that’s not to say that those experts didn’t make mistakes, but under somebody like an RFK, it’s a difference between mistakes and full on antipathy for the fundamentals of public health. And that is a really, really scary situation. 

Jane Coaston: Dr. El-Sayed, thank you so much for joining me. 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Thank you for having me. And uh look, we just got to put one foot in front of the other and keep working for the kind of America and the kind of world we want. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. You can hear more from him on his podcast, America Dissected. [music break]. 

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Get your vaccinations and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how Melania Trump is going to be a part time first lady and honestly same, like me What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and seriously get vaccinated. Like do it right now. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. 

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