Washington Wednesday: Power moves

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 22nd of October. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. First up on The World and Everything in It: Washington Wednesday.

First up, New York cozies up to socialism.

REICHARD: New Yorkers are now less than two weeks out from electing a new mayor. Democrat-turned-Independent Andrew Cuomo trying to gain some amount of momentum against socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo pleaded with Republicans to give up on Curtis Sliwa. Cuomo took to WABC radio to make the case that while a Mamdani win would set up Republicans to fight back against socialism, it would be at a cost, namely, well, socialism.

CUOMO: Yes, it's good Republican politics for Mamdani to win…. It's death for New York City.

MAST: Mamdani, for his part, continues to shore up support. He already had an endorsement from Governor Kathy Hochul but last week they appeared together at a press conference and she seemed to be cozying up to him even more. Let’s have a listen:

HOCHUL: I've had major differences with the candidate, Zohran Mamdani, on many issues. But I believe he's touched a nerve. He's created an energy around the will to just focus on what will make New York City even more exceptional, and that is to make it more affordable. So I have found an ally who understands, as I do, and have tried to implement statewide, all the priorities that I've talked about.

Political scientist and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker joins us now to talk about this and more. Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Mamdani’s policies certainly stretch any reasonable definition of “affordable.” And The Wall Street Journal last week pointed out that his plan to raise taxes is opposed to Hochul’s previous pledges not to raise them. So what’s going on here–she’s looking to lasso some of that same political “energy” she mentioned, harness the vibes? Can vibes win out over the political fallout of tax hikes?

BAKER: This is a very complex political chessboard right now, and there's, there's a lot of different things going on. So first of all, you have Kathy Hochul who has to worry about the competition between New York and all the other states. So certainly states like Florida and Texas are chomping at the bit to be more appealing to rich people, to be more appealing to big corporations. And so she knows that New York needs to try to maintain its position over against those other governments. There's a sense in which governments are competing with each other the same way that companies do.

So there's that angle, then there's another angle where there's kind of a battle within the Democrat Party between progressives and Democrats who might be a little more centrist, a little more business friendly, and Kathy Hochul has to think about that. You know, she could, on the one hand, say, Look, I'm not going to pay for any of these things that Mamdani wants to do. And he needs me, he needs the state legislature to do most of the things he wants to do, and we're just not going to do it. But if she does that, then she has to worry about the attack from the left and whether progressives will be able to primary her, primary other people in the assembly, and be victorious. Are we going to have kind of an AOC-type movement spreading in the state of New York and maybe other places in the country? So there's a lot going on in New York right now.

REICHARD: Such a chess game going on. On to another New York story, this one out of Queens. Former Congressman George Santos hails from there. President Trump just pardoned Santos last week of several crimes, including wire fraud, identity theft, embezzling funds, other things. He’d only served three months of a seven year sentence. I know the executive has broad pardon powers….although the president can pardon only federal crimes, not state crimes. But here’s my question, Hunter: Republicans brand themselves as the party of law and order. So how does this pardon square with that message?

BAKER: It doesn't. I mean, you know, there's, in one sense, we all may kind of think about that lovable rascal who's always getting in trouble and and we want to see them get out of trouble as easily as they got in maybe that's the way Trump is thinking about George Santos. But the reality is, there are a lot of serious crimes here, people who lost money and other things. He has been deceiving people for a long time, and it really does not help to build respect for the law when you pardon somebody of doing those sorts of things, what it leads people to believe is, is that there's one system of justice for people who know people, and then there's another system of justice for the rest of the people. So it's not a good message, and I don't think that the president should be doing this.

MAST: President Trump is also helping out a different sort of friend, Argentina’s President Javier Milei visited the White House to seal the deal on a 20 billion dollar currency swap.

MILEI (Spanish): I also want to thank the great work Secretary Bessent has made to help overcome this problem of illiquidity that Argentina had as a consequence of the political attacks we have suffered from our opposition.

Milei heard there…thanking Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for helping Argentina to overcome the problem of liquidity…he blames the political opposition for blocking growth.

Now, Argentina has gotten aid from the International Monetary Fund more than 20 times since 1958…and still has a lot of IOUs. Milei is using his economic background to turn the ship around…but what’s the opportunity and risk here you see with helping out Argentina this time?

BAKER: First of all, I just want to say, if people don't know Millais, look him up. What a fantastic character, Wolverine brought to life in the form of a politician with the crazy hair styled by the invisible hand, he says, and he goes around with a chainsaw with his plans to cut all the government programs. And I just want to say he has done incredible work. I mean, you're talking about a guy who took over Argentina that had something like 25% inflation per month. Imagine trying to live in a place where the inflation is that bad, and really has just been incredibly brave and charismatic in trying to fight that back. 

But when you do that, you are cutting government, you're cutting programs, you know, you start to lose popularity fast. So whatever he's going to do, he has to do it, and he has to succeed as rapidly as possible. And so that's why Trump and his Treasury Secretary is kind of stepping in trying to help Argentina and to basically back malaise play. And I think that this is actually very important. It's an important sort of a thing to do as a project against socialism, to show that free markets can work and can serve the people much better without this sort of ruinous instability of the currency and things like that, but also because it's important to have allies in Latin America. The United States should have good relationships with those countries for purposes of trade and for a variety of other reasons. So I'm very happy that Trump is doing this, and I'm pretty confident that it's going to work out.

REICHARD: While that’s going on, our government here in the US, shutdown continues…the Senate is meeting daily to vote on a Republican bill to keep funding levels the same through November but Democrats just aren’t buying it. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson is keeping his chamber on the sidelines until a bill gets passed:

JOHNSON: Now that Democrats have had their protests and publicity stunts, I just pray that they come to their senses and end this shutdown and reopen the government this week.

Until then, no other business is getting done…including swearing in a recently elected Democrat from Arizona, Adelita Grijalva [ah-deh-LEE-tuh gri-HALL-vuh]. Grijalva has said as soon as she’s sworn in, she’ll sign a petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files…and the discharge petition needs just one more signature to move ahead. So what do you make of the position Speaker Johnson is in, Hunter?

BAKER: It is pretty tough to read the tea leaves here, so Johnson says that he has not sworn her in, just because he's following the Pelosi precedent and delaying swearing in new members while the house is out of session. I wonder if that's true. You know, there's a lot of noise out there that Republicans are trying to get some of their members, such as Nancy Mace, to back off of her signature on that petition to discharge the Epstein files. You know, if that's the case, I'm uneasy, you know, what? What exactly are we worried about with the Epstein files? Like I said, with regard to New York, there's different levels. You know, on one level, you could just have Democrats trying to win the week. A lot of politics is you're trying to win the week, right? You know, make make your opponent look bad and score points, or there could be something deeper here, and that's what we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen when they turn over that card.

MAST: Before we go…I want your thoughts on last weekend’s nationwide protests calling for “No Kings.” Organizers estimate nearly 7 million people turned out. It’s not clear just what the protests are calling for… Last I checked, we still have a chief executive with constitutional limits and courts checking his actions. Hunter, do these protests say more about the President…or the people wearing the inflatables and carrying the signs?

BAKER: They say a lot about retail politics. Retail politics are all about mobilizing voters and getting your base to the polls. So if you can get a lot of people to give up their Saturday to go to a no kings protest, then you can probably get them to vote in the midterm elections, and that's what this is really about. It is obviously way over the top to think about Donald Trump as some kind of a king who needs to be resisted. He is currently a fairly elected president, popular vote majority, electoral college majority, neither of which were razor thin and is currently struggling despite having control of the White House and both houses of Congress with a government shutdown. That doesn't sound like a king to me, but what I will concede is that Presidents of both parties significantly exceed executive power the way it was originally conceived in the Constitution. And so what I would say is, let's not have a No Kings Day. Let's have a Return to the Constitution Day. Let's have an Honor our Governing Document Day instead, and we can all participate in that.

REICHARD: I’ve got my pocket Constitution right here! Hunter Baker is a political scientist and provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, thanks again.

BAKER: Thank you.

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