Transcript - America This Week, April 26, 2024: "The Magic Weekend"

Walter and Matt worry over an "uneasy coalition" seizing control of congress, and attempting to impose a new adults-and-children model of governance. Also, "The Magic Shop," by H.G. Wells

Matt Taibbi: All right. This is America this week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kim.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, how’s it going?

Walter Kirn: Good. I’ve decided not to shave this morning. It was a conscious and deliberate decision.

Matt Taibbi: That’s wise decision.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Well, see, I expected you to show up with that beard thing and I wanted to compete, but you’ve decided to go full Doogie Howser clean shaven, and I’m here looking like-

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, we got to get our cycles lined up. Yeah,

Walter Kirn: I look like the old man in the sea. It’s a beautiful day in Las Vegas springtime, and I’m in a pretty good mood. The seasons are finally turning and the craziness of the election season is upon us, so there will always be plenty to talk about.

Matt Taibbi: That’s for sure.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. We have lots to talk about. Just a quick announcement before we get to the show. We have a lot of interesting things to look at, but a couple of weeks ago, I announced on Racket that was going to be giving an award to the person who did the best yes the deep state is actually kind of awesome spoof video. And we did actually, we have a sizable amount of submissions. I’m going to be making an announcement about a winner, maybe more than one winner on Monday, so tune in. Probably going to rope Walter in just some consultation about some of these. Very creative stuff.

Walter Kirn: Well, I declare the New York Times the winner in advance. We can only award second prize because they’re very solemn and serious deep state is awesome videos were pretty unbeatable in my estimation.

Matt Taibbi: That’s true. As comedy goes, that was pretty unbeatable. So I guess we’ll be awarding second place. It’s like Larry Bird’s first three point contest. I’m just looking to see who’s coming in second, what he told the other guys in the locker room. Look, there was a lot of stuff that happened in the news this week. We could obviously talk about protests that are raging as we speak, not far from me in Columbia University, in Yale, NYU, across the country. But there was also a very consequential story over the last weekend that has potential ramifications, and there’s a really interesting theme that’s developed out of it. So Saturday, in kind of a rare Saturday congressional session, there was a series of votes where all sorts of things just suddenly got passed. The long-awaited funding bill for Israel and Ukraine and Taiwan, $95 billion in mostly military aid, which Republicans had been stonewalling for a long time, finally got passed. FISA got passed. There was a... The TikTok ban was also thrown in there in one of the bills.

But let’s just start with what it looked like when they passed the Foreign Aid bill, Walter, because I think you’ll find... We’ve all seen this scene, but it kind of sets the scene for everything else. Here’s the actual vote.

Speaker 1: On this vote, the ayes are 311 and the nays are 112. The bill has passed. Oh, one voting present. I missed it. Thank you. Okay. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The chair would remind my colleagues to observe proper decorum. Flag waving on the floor is not appropriate. The house will be in order. Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table. For what purpose does the gentleman from Florida rise? Well, the gentlewoman from Florida.

Speaker 2: Put those damn flags down.

Speaker 1: The gentlewoman is not recognized.

Matt Taibbi: All right. So that was Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna saying, “Put those damn flags down.” This became a big deal, the whole waving of the flags. Kind of interesting because we’ve been hearing a lot about how the Democrats were the only adults in the room and they’re waving Ukrainian flags on the house floor. And then Mike Johnson, who was in the process, or is about to be crowned Winston Churchill for his role in getting all this passed, afterwards, he comes out and gives a statement

Mike Johnson: Well, good afternoon everyone. The house has worked. Its will. These are not normal times here in the house or around the world, as we all know. And we saw it had a disturbance here on the house floor just a bit ago. I just want to say simply, what I think most people around the country understand and agree. We should only wave one flag on the house floor, and I think we know which flag that is.

Matt Taibbi: Okay, so that’s him admonishing the rest of the caucus. And then there was a series of reactions to this, and I kind of want to start with this one, Walter, because this was the most striking. This is Morning Joe, and they have a very interesting take on what happened that weekend.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to pounce the speaker over it. It’s a strange position to take, and I think they want to be in the minority too. I think that’s an obvious reality.

Mika Brzezinski: Yeah, that’s one way of putting it, Republican Congressman, Dan Crenshaw of Texas.

Joe Scarborough: Russia to win so badly. Yeah.

Mika Brzezinski: It’s a strange position to take.

Joe Scarborough: It’s a very bizarre position take.

Mika Brzezinski: Don’t really get it.

Joe Scarborough: Again, why do you have people from rural districts parroting Vladimir Putin’s talking points? Very strange. I don’t understand.

Mika Brzezinski: Very strange. Anyhow, he’s criticizing members of his own party, acting strange, threatening to remove Speaker Mike Johnson over funding for Ukraine. David French and Susan Glaser are still with us. Susan’s latest piece for the new Yorker is entitled, Did Mike Johnson Just Get Religion on Ukraine?

Joe Scarborough: Well, Susan, it certainly looks that way, does it not?

Mika Brzezinski: What happened?

Joe Scarborough: He’s quoting Ronald Reagan. He’s saying all this sort of things.

Mika Brzezinski: He just down in Mar-a-Lago.

Joe Scarborough: David French and I have been saying for years and have been wondering why he hasn’t been saying for six months now.

Susan B Glasser: The hour is late. Let’s just say that for Ukraine. It’s already a disaster on the front lines because of this months long delay by Republicans and by Mike Johnson. So for him to come out the other day, it was almost this like out of body experience. He was talking as if he was a Republican from the before times, and you can only imagine that Donald Trump was not happy to hear Mike Johnson talking about... He used the phrase axis of evil. He said, “I believe the intelligence...”

Matt Taibbi: So we’ve got Republicans from... He’s a Republican from the before times. He used the phrase axis of evil. He believed the intelligence. We are going back in time to the Bush era. Everybody’s stoked about it. And this is just the beginning of that theme. This would continue throughout the week. This whole idea that we are going back to the more civilized Bush era when we were fighting terrorism and everybody was on board with it. But first of all, Walter, what do you think of that whole, “He’s from the before times” thing.

Walter Kirn: Well, I’ve got a few comments here. First of all, I couldn’t help but notice the subliminal insertion of the word rural in Joe’s talk there. It’s rural people who support Putin. I’m going to be on a watch for this word forever now, because since that white rural rage book, I’ve noticed a demonization of the country people of America, also known as my neighbors. So I don’t know why he stuck that in there, but apparently yoking Putin and ruralness is important now, and he made sure to do that. Second of all, did Mike Johnson-

Matt Taibbi: Actually, Walter, if I could interrupt you briefly, he actually did one better on that theme. This will take just a second. Hang on a sec.

Walter Kirn: Sure.

Speaker Mike Johnson: You do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may.

Joe Scarborough: That’s the right answer. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reporting there. And just one quick correction. Marjorie Taylor Greene had said that he betrayed conservative voters. By conservative voters, she means conservative voters in Moscow, conservative voters who support Vladimir Putin, conservative voters who hate freedom in Ukraine, who hate freedom across the west, who hate freedom in places that Americans guaranteed freedom since 1945.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, I thought he said rural there. I guess he didn’t, but you get the idea.

Walter Kirn: Right. Right.

Matt Taibbi: It’s conservative. We’re right back to terror lovers.

Walter Kirn: Freedom hating Americans in rural America, if we’re going to join his later comment. Anyway, I noticed also... What was her name, the new Yorker writer?

Matt Taibbi: Oh God,

Walter Kirn: Glaser or something like that.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, Susan Glasser.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Her headline was, “Did Mike Johnson Get Religion? To which I want to ask, what religion would that be? They have made a religion of war not to be too preachy here, and apparently he’s joined it, that they’re going to equate that with a kind of American belief system, our continuous funding of wars is honest of them, at least. As far as the before times go, the Joe type people, the MSNBC people are not usually given to nostalgia. That’s often a conservative trait. We’re said to be one. But we’re now seeing these kind of Democrats, liberals, so on hearken back to a time of normalcy and goodness that, like you say, was probably the Bush times when funding wars and crying terrorism and doing everything in their power to clamp down on the ability to question it domestically felt like the good old days. And so they’re back.