The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 11 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Eight Senate Democrats have now provided the votes to move forward with a plan to fund the government. They agreed to this without getting the Democrats’ principal demand, a continuation of expanded Obamacare subsidies, which will mean millions losing health care or seeing premiums soar. On Monday, President Trump exploded in a long deranged rant on Truth Social, attacking air traffic controllers who took time off during the shutdown. and even said money will be sent to those who did not take time off. It was all nonsense, but it occurred to us that the very absurdity of this reveals just how weak Trump’s position really is in the shutdown, which in turn makes the case even stronger for Democrats to hold the line, not cave. Brian Beutler has a good new piece on his Substack, Off Message, digging into the deeper dynamics of the Democratic surrender. So we’re talking to him about all this today. Always good to have you on, Brian.
Brian Beutler: It’s great to be back.
Sargent: So right now, the Senate has advanced the measure reopening the government without extending ACA subsidies. If and when the Senate finalizes passage, the House is expected to follow suit this week. What’s galling is this comes right after Trump and the GOP suffered a massive electoral rebuke. Mikie Sherrill, who won the New Jersey governor’s race, slammed Dems for caving, saying voters are, “counting on us to fight for them.”
Brian, what bothers me about all this is that Mikie Sherrill knows where the energy came from that drove her win. And that should be informing how Democrats proceed now, but it’s not.
Beutler: Yeah, you’d think so, right? It’s striking that every Democrat at every level of power, other than the ones that were involved in the capitulation, see quite clearly why this was stupid.
And, you know, I think different politicians supported the Democratic posture in the shutdown fight for different reasons. Some of them were genuinely interested in restoring the Obamacare subsidies. Others were more interested in hemming Trump in from violating budget laws, right?
If you’re the incoming governor of Virginia, for instance, you want the shutdown to end, but you don’t want him to be firing government employees against the law willy-nilly whenever he wants. So having Democrats take a stand against that kind of activity is smart.
If you care about democracy and the threat of fascism in America, it’s very important to draw down Donald Trump’s approval ratings and to divide his Republican loyalists in Congress. And the shutdown, as it dragged on, was exposing all kinds of divisions and vulnerabilities in the MAGA coalition.
It’s only either a sort of out-of-touch, older Democrat or a scared, frontline, moderate-minded kind of Senator who worries about their electability in the future, who can’t see the forest because they’re focused on those trees. And they’re the ones who, one way or another, orchestrated the cave, and they have basically no support outside of themselves within the party.
Sargent: Well, in this context, Trump erupts with this insane rant. I’m going to read some of it.
“All air traffic controllers must get back to work, NOW!!!. Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially docked. For those air traffic controllers who didn’t take ANY TIME OFF for the Democrat shutdown hoax, I will be recommending a BONUS of $10,000 per person for distinguished service to our country. For those that did nothing but complain and took time off, I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the USA against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country.”
Brian, I think the absurdity of this shows that Trump is very vulnerable to the shutdown continuing. What do you think?
Beutler: Part of it suggests that somebody has talked to Trump recently about Ronald Reagan’s glorious moment firing air traffic controllers when they went on strike. And some of it is him reaching into his Apprentice toolkit to sound like the in-charge boss who’s gonna really take it to the underperforming employees. And then a third aspect of it is that it actually does in a weird way honor the terms of the deal that these eight Democrats struck with Republicans where until January 30th, Trump’s not allowed to do a reduction in force. He’s not allowed to willy-nilly fire people.
Sargent: Under the deal.
Beutler: Under under the terms of the deal. And so he’s not saying, you know, we’re going to we’re going to fire all the air traffic controllers that refuse to come to work or were furloughed. He’s saying I’m not happy with you, but I have no recourse. And if you leave of your own volition, I’ll be fine with that, which is a confession in a way of weakness on his part, which is rare for him. But mostly, I just think he’s he’s lashing out because this has been a very frustrating experience for him. And it has dragged his poll numbers down substantially. Now I guess we’ll find out with the shutdown coming to an end whether he rebounds or not.
Sargent: Yes, I think that Trump rant illustrates the power dynamics here pretty clearly. As long as the government is shut down, he’s reduced to ranting furiously and threatening government workers to try to get them to somehow minimize the political pain he’s feeling. Go to work or else I’ll dock you, right? Yet this dynamic seems lost on the Democrats who caved. We keep hearing from them stuff like, the shutdown wasn’t working because Trump wasn’t caving, but he was swirling down the drain politically. So it was working in that sense. And that, I don’t understand how it is that this, you know, appeasement aid or whatever you want to call them really doesn’t get that.
Beutler: Yeah, I do want to, you know, acknowledge that one sentiment driving the decision to cave may have been a real generosity of spirit. Like the shutdown went on for 40 days, there was real pain, not just for government employees—people who lost SNAP benefits were gonna go hungry.
And people who needed to travel were finding their flights canceled or delayed. And, you know, some of that’s work, some of that’s pleasure, but people fly for emergencies all the time. And, you know, unpredictable flight cancellations can be extremely disruptive to people who need our systems to run smoothly.
But Trump chose to do those things. Trump chose to make that pain happen, thinking that it would hurt Democrats, but it kept hurting him. And so there’s this—like, I think the evidence of his insecurity in this fight is that he wanted to cut the flights, but he also didn’t want the air traffic controllers to not show up.
He wanted to cut SNAP benefits because he thought it would hurt—like, Democrats with their, you know, their bleeding hearts would be forced to reopen the government. But then he realized that it was going to cause him pain. So he said he would, you know, reinstate some of the SNAP benefits. And then he went to court to—you know what I mean? He kept going in these circles because he didn’t have any good moves.
Sargent: All the pain is experienced, or at least most of it is being experienced by him, politically speaking.
Beutler: Yes.
Sargent: And that’s just, that’s just a basic fact about the power dynamics here. There’s a little tick in the way Democrats are talking about this that I also want to bring up. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who’s one of the eight who caved, said on TV that Republicans and Trump said they’ll work with us on the ACA subsidies, so now if we reopen the government, we’ll see if they really mean it. The basic tone is, okay, now we’re really calling their bluff. They’re cornered. But this seems to fundamentally misunderstand the moment. Either Dems use their leverage and power or they don’t. And when they don’t, Trump looks strong and they look weak. When the president is engaged in rampant lawlessness like this, there is no bluff calling. That’s a point you’ve been making. Can you talk about that?
Beutler: It sounds a little bit contradictory, but there’s strong ways to cave and then there’s weak ways to cave. And what we’ve seen is Democrats say essentially, we tried to fight Donald Trump and it didn’t work, so we give up. That was Angus King’s line, essentially.
But if they had reached the same decision, but from a different posture, it might not have appeared to everyone like surrender, right? If Jeanne Shaheen or Angus King, or ideally just Chuck Schumer, went to the mics and said, you know, we have tried everything we can to make Republicans give you back your health care. They refuse to do so. The only way you’re going to get your health care back is to elect Democrats.
In the meantime, Americans need their government to be working for them. The problem with that is that Donald Trump can’t be trusted with a full year budget. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to give him one month of budget authority. And if he doesn’t break the law, we’ll give him another month. And we’re going to keep him on a very short leash to keep him in line with the law.
And if he and Russell Vought break the budget law even one more time, there will be no more Democratic votes for even a month of budget, of budget runway. Then at least you’re setting the terms—you’re saying, look, like they are completely irrational about health care and you’re going to pay for it and we’re sorry about that, vote for us next time.
In the meantime, we have to do something about the lawlessness and this is the only way we can do it.
Sargent: To sort of try to boil down the underlying principle that you’re articulating here. Everything needs to be run through the following prism. Are Democrats showing that they are using leverage and power to constrain Donald Trump, or are they not doing that? Does that sound right?
Beutler: Yeah, I think that’s right. And look, I was of the view at the outset of this shutdown fight that it was a mistake to make healthcare subsidies the centerpiece of the fight. And I had a number of reasons for being skeptical of that approach.
But one of them is that if you win, then you actually shield Donald Trump and voters from the consequences of Republican policy. You reduce the harm he meant to inflict on the public. And if the public never understands what they voted for, they’ll never necessarily know why they shouldn’t vote that way again in the future.
So in a way, politically speaking, it’s good that Democrats, quote unquote, lost this issue. In losing, they have said, and therefore we will relinquish, essentially, future opportunities to use leverage, use deadlines to bend Trump to our will. And that is a posture of weakness that I think, you know, voters paying minimal attention to this will pick up upon.
Sargent: Yes, absolutely. And I think, by the way, there’s almost like a tendency to regard the mission of bringing Trump’s approval rating down as something political and not substantive. But when you’re in a context like this, where Donald Trump is engaged in rampant lawlessness and lawbreaking, consolidating authoritarian power on many fronts, bringing down his approval rating is pretty important. It actually, you know, could impact over time how far he gets in consolidating autocratic power, don’t you think?
Beutler: I think it’s the Democrats’ highest calling in office right now is to make Donald Trump less popular through whatever means, right? Supporting the No Kings rallies is one way, dividing his loyalists in Congress over issues is another way. Standing up to him in the context of a government shutdown fight and making him seem weaker than he is is another way, emphasizing his corruption scandals is another way.
And more and more as time goes on, I think we’re seeing the Democrats are falling into patterns that they established back in his first term, where after they performed well in special elections and off-year elections in 2017, they decided it was because they had stood up to him when he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they won that fight.
And they told themselves, well, health care must be the silver bullet that helps us take Trump down. And so they lost track of all the other things that made voters upset with Donald Trump. And in doing so, I think that they helped keep his first-term approval ratings higher than they would have been if they had been fighting on multiple fronts at once.
Fast forward to 2025, and they’re doing something similar after winning an off-year election a week ago. They’re telling themselves that it was because people are mad that goods and houses are unaffordable. And so all they need to do is talk about affordability and do stuff to help Americans afford more things.
And that will be the magic bullet that makes Donald Trump less popular and we shouldn’t be wasting our time in this shutdown fight. I think that that’s looking at things entirely the wrong way.
Sargent: I agree. I think it’s the combination of anti-Trump and affordability politics that is the real potent mix. And so where does this go from here? My strong suspicion is that someone like Chuck Schumer, you know, has been around a long time. He’s been through ups and downs and ups and downs and he’s seen Democrats lose. He’s seen Democrats win. He probably thinks that the politics of the midterms are largely going to take care of themselves, I think. He doesn’t think that extraordinary measures are required to fundamentally break Trump’s approval in the way that you and I think so. How do you see it all playing out? Are Democrats going to kind of follow that Schumer playbook all the way through 2026, or are they going to listen more to, I don’t know, Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker, who are on the front lines of the Trump authoritarian assault and are just urging, you know, a maximal effort to break Trump in every way possible. What are Democrats going to do and what’s going to happen?
Beutler: Yeah, I think I could see this playing out in a number of different ways. I think it’s worth recalling that the last time we were in a political dynamic like this, the parties were flipped. Republicans were deeply unpopular, including with their own base. They had just lost the 2008 elections by a landslide, their leaders were super unpopular among Republican voters.
They didn’t purge their leadership at that moment. And the result was that they won a huge landslide driven by activist Tea Party that hated the Republican leadership. I think something similar could absolutely happen this time around, where Chuck Schumer continues to frustrate Democratic voters, liberal voters, pro-democracy voters, and they nevertheless turned out in record numbers to elect Democrats next November.
And you know, the news cycle moves really quickly. If this goes as I think we both think it’s going to go, the House is going to come back in session. Adelita Grijalva will be seated. She will be the 218th signatory on the discharge petition to force a vote to release the Epstein files. There will be new things in the news that make Republicans look bad.
And if it continues like that, yes, Chuck Schumer can continue disappointing all of us and Democrats can still do well a year from now. But the continuing resolution, the temporary budget extension that is likely to pass this week, runs for the most part through January 30th. And so there’s going to have to be another reckoning about this.
And the one tiny concession Democrats got this time, which we alluded to a few minutes ago, is that for the term of this budget extension through January 30th, Donald Trump is not allowed to do what it’s known as RIFs, reductions in forces, firing federal workers without cause, essentially. And if he ends up needing further extensions of this extension, then that provision will carry over and he’ll spend the rest of this coming year unable to fire people willy-nilly, which is something that he wants to do.
And I think Democrats can be, you know, urged by people like us to expand on that—to say, all right, we tried to get you on health care, you wouldn’t bend, now people are losing health care by the millions, or paying thousands of dollars or more a year for their premiums. So we’re going to move on from that.
But we are not going to give you a year’s worth of budget authority if Donald Trump is going to not just fire people, but cancel contracts, shut down whole agencies, etc. against the law—essentially reneging on the terms of the deal that we strike. So if you want our votes this time you have to include language that bans all of that. And if you won’t, then we’re not going to give you more than another month.
There are ways for Democrats to continue to wield leverage even if Chuck Schumer is sort of hostile to the idea. And I guess at some point, we’ll find out if there’s any incarnation of, like, Democrats using their power that he is comfortable with, or if he’ll just orchestrate a series of caves until 2026, at which point probably he is no longer electable as leader.
Sargent: I will say that one thing that gives me optimism about this going in a better direction is the amount of noise we’ve heard from people like Mikie Sherrill and J.B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom. There’s a lot of work for you and me to do, that’s for sure.
Brian Beutler, thanks so much for coming on, man. Always great to talk to you.